15 Major Insights & Themes of 2023

A 5,800+ word opus unpacking my year

Dear Diary,

Phew, wow, what a year it’s been so far. 

Hard to believe there are only 2 months left in 2023. 

A lot has been happening and moving.

Today I’d like to share, document, and process some of the major insights, shifts, and themes of 2023 so far.

Let’s dive right in:

1. The meta-journey of integrating and embodying a balanced synthesis of the Right-Hand and Left-Hand Path.

This is probably the most significant meta-theme/-lens I’ve been exploring and pondering this year.

It might sound abstract, yet this theme is *highly alive* in my day-to-day life—and feels like a matter of visceral importance. 

If you’re unaware, the terms “Right-Hand Path” and “Left-Hand Path” are somewhat ambiguous and can have different meanings, yet generally refer to two major meta-schools of thought regarding seemingly-divergent-and-potentially-irreconcilable paths that one can take, both in Life generally and on the road Home to God—or toward what some call ‘awakening,’ ‘enlightenment,’ ‘illumination.’

Whereas the “Right-Hand Path” tends to revolve around service, devotion, humility, worship, self-sacrifice, diligence, virtue, intensive labors, community- & family-oriented thinking, ‘doing the right thing,’ and surrender to God…

The “Left-Hand Path” tends to center on individuality, experimentation, self-actualization/-divinization, ‘breaking rules & defying norms,’ avant-garde art, will, power, manifestation, ‘direct path’ teachings, ‘rascal’ or ‘trickster’ antics, and (quasi-hedonistic) bliss-chasing.

My path in Life and Spirituality has always expressed elements of both the Right- and Left-Hand Path. 

Raised within the Catholic tradition, I was initiated quite comprehensively into the Catholic system of belief, which is *heavily* Right-Hand-Path-y in nature. 

In many ways this laid a beautiful foundation for my life, yet my soul also found it suffocating, and over time this suffocation bubbled, bubbled, bubbled within me, eventually boiling over into a full-blown rebellion from the Right-Hand-Path-centric ways of my early youth. 

I was always a ‘wild child’ and a bit of a rascal. My parents called me ‘Mowgli’ because they could barely get me to wear clothes for years as a youngster. This wild streak is still there today, is definitely of a more Left-Hand-Path-y nature, and was never going to allow itself to be entirely silenced by the conditioning of Catholic life in small-town Iowa.

My Left-Hand-Path-y rebellion began with breaking rules at school, cursing on the golf course, petty theft, poker, tons of video games, porn, and experimenting with weed and alcohol. In college it crescendoed further into a full-on binge lifestyle of frequent black-out drinking, daily cannabis smoking, lazy livin’, more video games, more porn, selling herb, joining a fraternity, flirting with atheism & nihilism, one-night stands & extensive sexual experimentation.

Psychedelic experimentation in college had begun to awaken a mystical awareness within me, and this gradually led me to balance out somewhat in my post-college years, re-integrating a more Right-Hand-Path-y moderation and virtuousness. Yet for the most part, my path—though now more spiritual in nature—remained heavily Left-leaning. 

From age 22 - 30, I lived the life of a freewheeling, world-traveling vagabond. I traveled to 33 countries, made tons of experimental art & music, took large quantities of psychedelics, talked a lot about manifestation, sold many online courses, developed a bit of a ‘guru complex,’ started creating retreats, and generally encouraged people to follow their Bliss & Highest Excitement. I saw myself as rebelling against a sick mainstream culture and ‘escaping the rat race.’

I didn’t really notice at the time that I was living an extremely self-focused, self-absorbed, and self-glorifying lifestyle. And to be fair, I think I wrote, said, created, and did a lot of great things in those years. I was flowin’ and shinin’ and spreadin’ plenty of Love and positive messages. I had many profound experiences of God during that time and believe I helped many others move closer to Love and God. 

2. Fatherhood and Family Life

Then I became a father, and everything changed dramatically. In a flash, Life was suddenly *not about me* anymore. Or, at least, *not nearly as much* about me. 

Fatherhood invited me into a totally different paradigm—one that is far more Right-Hand-Path-y than what I had grown used to. One that integrates far more service and devotional self-sacrifice than I was used to. 

I’ve needed to re-integrate much of the Right-Hand-Path-y Catholic operating system of my youth just to be able to ‘stay put’ in the long-term pressure cooker of fatherhood, engaged-to-be-married partnership, and family life. The Left-Hand-Path-y ‘Peter Pan’ part of me that was often in the driver’s seat during my 20’s, wants to run away. He’s basically a wild ‘n’ free flowboi who just wants to dance spontaneously through life, floating on the breeze, going wherever the wind takes him. 

I absolutely adore my daughter, Lila. She is the Light of my life. I love her with all of my heart. 

And I deeply love her mother—my fiance, Tanja. 

I love our family—mystically, wholly, eternally.

And yet wow, it has been *tough*.

Surrendering into a far-more-Right-Hand-Path-y paradigm of self-sacrificing service to my daughter, my soon-to-be wife, and our family, has not been easy for my stubborn, rebellious, whimsical self.

Earlier this year, I seemed to go through a pendulum swing, in which for ~6 months I was able to embrace & embody the most Right-Hand-Path-y adult version of me that had ever existed. I was basically able to almost-fully embrace being a church-going family man. I was solo-caring for my daughter ~40 hours per week while diligently serving others with integrity, rebuilding my business, paying off debt, and getting my finances in order. I was living about the healthiest lifestyle I ever have—eating well, exercising regularly, practicing martial arts, practicing regular breathwork & meditation & prayer & nature time.

Then the burnout came. 

3. Burnout

It started to reveal itself through chronic irritability. 

A lot of anger boiling to the surface—some of which I was able to cleanly release/process and some of which inevitably spilled out onto those around me, most notably Tanja. 

[I’m still trying to figure out the best approaches for skillfully working with the energy of anger. If you have suggestions, please let me know.]

I denied it for a while. Denied that I was burning out. Told myself I just needed to keep stretching the edge of my comfort zone—increasing my carrying capacity. 

But the anger and irritability kept getting worse. 

Then the poker, fatigue, and physical illness came. 

4. Poker

Quite suddenly, I went from playing no online poker at all, to playing dozens of hours per week. 

I’ve loved poker since I was ~15, and have loved video games since I was ~7. So this was a re-manifestation of a couple very old tendencies of mine. 

In the past 3 months or so, I’ve probably played hundreds of hours of (mostly online) poker—mostly online No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournaments. 

And this endeavor/hobby/vice/numb-out-fest has been modestly profitable, generating nearly ~$1,600 for my family during that time. 

But it also has its costs. 

The ‘poker daemon’ has devoured bountiful quantities of time, energy, focus, and presence. It has made me less present with my daughter and the people around me. It is also an emotional rollercoaster which often makes me irritated or even enraged, and its swings are emotionally exhausting. 

I do love it, though. I will say that. I still love that mysterious, many-layered game we call ‘poker.’

’Tis a many-sided jewel of a game, even if some of those sides cast more shadow than light. 

What my laptop screen looks like when playing poker. I’m usually playing 4-6 games at once.

I love its intricacies. Every hand is a new riddle to be solved. And if you’re better at solving the riddles than your opponents, you have an edge on the field, and you’re likely to be profitable over time, if you put in enough ‘volume’ to realize your edge. ‘Volume’ is essential due to ‘variance’—the inevitable swings of poker that even the most-skilled players experience, due to the irreducible quantity of a little thing called Luck, which is inherent in the game. 

I’ve played poker for many years, and I’m damn good at it by this point. 

The last time I played a lot was the summer of 2021, right before my daughter was born. When Lila arrived in this world, I cut off all poker-playing. I don’t think I played more than once or twice for ~2 years. 

Interestingly, when I came back to the game ~3 months ago in 2023, I seemed to have become a better poker player. I imagine it had something to do with fatherhood and financial necessity: Both of these factors made me a more disciplined player who knew that he could not afford to spend time on this hobby unless it was going to be at least a break-even—if not a winning—proposition. That is, I knew I needed to make money, so I made a point to game-select in a far more uncompromising manner—choosing to play smaller-field tournaments with less variance—and within the games I played, I made more disciplined decisions. 

And like I said, I have been making money. And that has been cool. 

[For the record, my current favorite sites to play on are globalpoker.com (if you’re in the USA) and betonline.ag (accessible in more places).]

But there’s also more to the picture. 

5. Fatigue & Physical Illness

I don’t believe this resurgence of my poker obsession was random. 

Right around the time that poker started to ‘take over,’ I was also starting to experience substantial fatigue and loss of motivation for most all other endeavors. 

The burnout was real, and was becoming depressive. 

Soon after, I developed some sort of upper respiratory infection, and I was physically sick for about ~7-8 out of the past 10 weeks. 

My system has definitely been telling me that I pushed too hard in my newfound Right-Hand-Path-y identity and pursuits, and something needed to shift. I had been in ‘warrior mode’ for much of the year, pushing myself harder than ever to ‘show up fully’ for my family and business ~60-70 hours/wk in a highly scheduled/structured way, and this was not sustainable. It turns out that my soul and personality type require more alone time and free-flowing spontaneity than I was allowing myself.

The poker-playing is symptomatic of the larger burnout, I feel.

Poker synergizes perfectly with burnout, allowing a person to simply remain comfortably couch-locked for hours on end while numbing out, firing off dopamine, and escaping into a clearly-defined game-world where one easily becomes completely immersed in a flow-state of probabilistic decision-making based on the reading of (psychological) patterns. 

It doesn’t necessarily *cure* the burnout, though. That’s the tricky thing. 

6. Healing the Burnout

Poker is not really a regenerative, rejuvenating activity—especially when played in excessive quantities. 

I believe it has helped me cope with the burnout and even earn some income while going through a quasi-existential crisis. 

It’s hard to approximate all of the possible purposes that poker has been serving in my life and psyche.

“We never know what things are good for,” as one of my favorite sayings goes. 

Vices and addictions often serve deeper self-medicative purposes than we give them credit for, and this is why it can actually be dangerous to cut off (multiple) vices and addictions all at once. You may not fully realize what the vice or addiction has been accomplishing or ‘propping up’ or protecting you from within your own psyche. 

I’m currently super curious to find out what role poker is ultimately going to have in my life. I wonder if I will be able to find a relatively balanced, healthy way to integrate it moving forward. And this question seems closely related to the question of whether I will find a way to integrate/embody a skillfully-balanced synthesis of the Right-Hand & Left-Hand Paths.

Anywho, a current pressing question is: How do I actually heal from this burnout? 

So far it seems like spending a lot of time alone, sleeping, resting, meditating, doing breathwork, immersing in nature, wisely integrating plant medicine, and doing whatever possible to truly relax the ‘nervous’ system, are the best answers for me. 

I just spent 4 days largely offline on a nature retreat & adventure with my dad on the coast of Lake Superior, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. That felt restorative and healing. 

And yesterday I flew to Mexico, where I intend to spend 5 weeks in total at the jungle oasis known as Kumankaya Healing Center. 

For 3 of those weeks I will be co-facilitating retreats for others, and for 2 of those weeks I intend to be on retreat as a participant, simply focusing completely on my own healing and rejuvenation process. In the final couple days in the jungle, I will be reunited with Tanja and Lila and our families for Tanja and I’s wedding. Tanja and Lila left the USA a few days ago to head to Germany, where they will reside for ~8 weeks in total while we are apart, until the wedding. 

This might seem like a lot of time apart. It is, and I already miss Tanja and Lila. However, I also have a deep intuition that this level of *space* is also indispensable right now, in order for me to dive into my own process and *really* heal, rejuvenate, and shift in whatever ways I’m meant to shift at this time. 

As I’ve said, I adore our family, yet we’ve been living in close quarters for years on end, with very little time apart, and some parts of me have come to feel suffocated by this. This has led to irritability on my end and rockiness in Tanja and I’s relationship, and I strongly sense that intentional space—and giving everything room to breathe—is vital right now. Most marriages end in divorce or zombification these days, and I strongly suspect that a lack of intentional *space* and time for *retreat* is a major factor in this trend. 

I am truly hopeful that this time of deep rest in the jungle—in combination with an appropriate interspersing of ayahuasca and Bufo—will be just the restoration I need right now. I have had some intuitions of an impending ‘quantum leap’ that will occur during this time in the jungle. Let’s see. 

7. Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS—also known as ‘parts work’—has been an important part of my process in recent years, and has been a valuable tool in processing my burnout.

IFS focuses on healing, integrating, and harmonizing all our inner ‘parts’ or subpersonalities—especially in relation to what IFS calls the ‘Self,’ which is basically equivalent to the ‘true self,’ the ‘Heart,’ or the ‘Divine within.’

Parts work is kinda like this.

I’ve been writing and sharing about my inner process through an IFS-inspired lens for years now, often in men’s circles, and I’ve been gradually developing my own IFS-inspired framework. More recently, I’ve also started working one-on-one with an IFS-informed healer who is holding space for me.

This work has done a lot for me and revealed me to myself in fascinating ways, most of which I don’t have space to get into here.

For now, here’s one example I can share to illustrate what this ‘parts’-based lens has done for me: 

It’s helped me understand that I have Right-Hand-Path-y parts and I have Left-Hand-Path-y parts. 

If the pendulum of my inner being swings too far in the direction of the Right-Hand Path, the parts on the ‘other side’ eventually start getting really angry and screaming out, “HEY, WE HAVEN’T GONE ANYWHERE. WE’RE STILL HERE. YOU’RE NEGLECTING US. THIS IS UPSETTING. YOU BETTER REMEMBER US AND LET US BREATHE TOO OR WE’RE GOING TO FULL-ON *REBEL* ON YOUR ASS. WE’RE WILD & FREE & WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK & WE WILL BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER TO THE GROUND IF YOU DON’T GIVE US SPACE TO RUN FREE.”

This is basically what has been happening the past ~3 months during my 2023 poker saga.

The wild ‘n’ free Left-Hand-Path-y parts of me started to rebel.

These parts hopped into the driver’s seat and engaged ‘hedonistic freedom’ mode. 

This prompted me to basically eagerly seek out ways to binge on vices and escape my life—an old pattern that was especially prevalent in my college days. 

This resulted in me playing tons of poker, eating tons of shitty delicious food, and going a bit overboard on cannabis these past ~3 months. 

A wise friend once told me, “If you’re gonna binge, at least be as awake as possible while doing it.”

I like that mantra, and I’ve endeavored to observe myself closely during this process, and to be unflinchingly honest with myself about what I’m doing—and what it costs.

The Left-Hand-Path-y parts of me have been rebelling, and they’re letting me know loud-and-clear that I need to ongoingly give them more space to breathe, laugh, and run wild ’n’ free.

This adds an extra layer of interestingness to the fact that the upcoming December retreat I’m hosting is called *Wild Freedom*. (Still a couple spaces left! : ))

I’m hopeful that building in consistent, ongoing, intermittent chunks of *intentional space* for larger retreats and getaways to let my Left-Hand-Path-y parts breathe and run free—in combination with claiming space and setting boundaries more effectively in day-to-day life—will be the game-changer that allows me to more harmoniously integrate my Right- and Left-Hand-Path-y parts without running into major burnouts or rage-explosions. 

8. Alcohol

It has been extremely difficult not to drink alcohol during this ‘hedonistic freedom’ phase.

I’m a little over 9 months into the 1-year fast from alcohol that I embarked upon in January of 2023 when I was largely in Right-Hand-Path mode.

I have held strong, but it hasn’t been easy—especially recently. It was way easier for the first few months when I was in Right-Hand-Path mode, but since the Left-Hand-Path-y poker saga began, it’s been a challenge.

I’ve probably spent $100+ on BudZero—0.0% beer—in the past ~8 weeks in Iowa. I haven’t allowed myself to drink most ‘non-alcoholic’ beers because they actually often contain ~0.5% alcohol. Drinking 0.0% beer has been helpful, though. It satiates the desire for beer and often brings on a small placebo effect. 

To be honest, I’ve actually wondered if alcohol would’ve been beneficial on some recent occasions, as a form of self-medication. A single beer or two can often work wonders in terms of ‘taking the edge off’ for me, dropping me into a less-stressed and less-irritable state. 

Is it possible that my ancestors actually developed a relatively symbiotic relationship with alcohol, and that having alcohol available to me is better than not having it available?

I guess I’ll find out next year.

At this point, I’m really looking forward to late January of 2024 when I can drink a damn beer again. 

I held firm, though. 

I held firm because I made that 1-year commitment from a deep place within me; I made it firmly; I made it for my daughter and our family; I made it to develop more mastery over alcohol; I declared it publicly to create extra accountability; and so I am going through with it. When I say I’m going to do something, I want to follow through. I want my word to be worth something. 

9. Cannabis

Cannabis has been another theme this year. 

I don’t think I have too much to say about it at this time.

It’s been nice to have cannabis around when I haven’t been able to drink alcohol. 

I like being able to shift state via substances. I like shifting into ‘altered’ states of consciousness. 

I used cannabis in quite an intentional way for much of the year—usually around ~two times per week in the evenings. 

More recently during the poker saga my usage became more intensive, more casual, less ceremonial. Probably ~3-4 times per week or so. 

I still enjoy cannabis after all these years. And I imagine I will continue to do so for years or decades to come. 

10. Porn

Porn is another vice that I’ve had an interesting relationship with this year. 

As of ~1 month ago, I had gone about ~14 months without watching porn.

This was the longest break I had taken since first watching porn at age ~16 or so.

For many years I was a ~daily porn viewer.

After working with ayahuasca for the first few times in 2018, however, I only watched it ~5 times the following year. I hadn’t intended to do so; it simply happened naturally. 

Since that time, I’ve continued to watch porn far less than I used to, with occasional bursts of revisiting the old pattern.

In ~August of 2022, a heart-centered brother of mine asked me if I was still watching porn. I told him I occasionally was, and he said something like, “Just stop watching it, man. It’s not serving you.” In that moment his words hit me in a deep way, and like I said, I didn’t watch any porn for about ~14 months after that.

But, in the last month or so, during the poker saga, I broke the streak. It started while hanging out with an old friend of mine. We were playing online poker together, and he turned on a Twitch streamer—a gorgeous woman in yoga pants who did all sorts of ‘yoga poses’ in seductive ways for her audience. 

This little ‘hit’ of my old vice was a slippery slope that gradually led to visiting pornhub.com for the first time in ~14 months, watching a few videos, and of course, pleasuring myself.

This has been an interesting experience. 

In recent years I’ve definitely become far more aware that ejaculating too often depletes a man’s life force energy in substantial ways. 

I am aware that gargantuan quantities of life-force energy are being habitually sacrificed to the Porn Deity, with the resultant effect being that millions of men are far less motivated to create a soul-aligned life or to search for soulmates in a dedicated way. 

My general feeling is that porn is largely co-opted by dark magick and very difficult to interact with in a way that is life-giving and beneficial. 

And nonetheless, in the past few weeks, I found myself watching it. And as I did so, there *was* a sense that reconnecting to my sexuality and sexual energy in that way, was serving some kind of purpose in my present process.

Again: “We never know what things are good for.”

I seem to almost always have this uncanny feeling that whatever I’m going through—even if it hurts a lot or if I know it isn’t ‘deeply aligned with my heart and soul’—is serving some kind of purpose. It’s something I need to go through, for reasons I will likely never fully understand. 

It doesn’t seem likely that I will ever return to daily or even regular porn viewing over long spans of time. 

But I’ve also never really been the type to swear things off permanently, or cut them off cold turkey and never return. 

I like to keep options open, and if I have a strong instinct to revisit an old vice, sometimes I listen to that instinct. 

In a profound sense, Life lives itself, and we can never know all the multiferous purposes being served by every single move on the chessboard. 

So, I try to let it all flow. 

It is as it is.

11. Creativity & Entrepreneurship

Despite going through a damn intense and challenging year, I have still generated a large creative & entrepreneurial output in 2023.

I released several albums/projects containing ~70+ songs, most of which were made this year, and for most of which I also made the beats/instrumentals.

I released ~all this music this year.

I published dozens of blog posts and tens of thousands of words.

I published my third book, Both, Neither, Far Beyond Either, and I’ll soon publish my fourth book, The War for the Soul of Mankind — (Secret tip: The Kindle version is actually already available.)

I birthed True Creation Accelerator and have been leading two sessions per week within that container for the past several months.

I started a second men’s circle within Brothers of the Ever Innocent Heart and have been leading two men’s circles per week for ~most of the year within that container.

I co-created two Apotheosis retreats which the team and I are about to facilitate in Mexico in the coming weeks.

I’m also creating Wild Freedom retreat, which will take place in Mexico in December. Join us.

I’ve also led many one-on-one sessions and ceremonies for people this year, including a one-week custom retreat with a client in the forest outside Prague.

I also co-facilitated two retreats in the Netherlands with Tanja.

I also journaled a lot.

And I doodled a bunch of whimsical drawings.

Lastly, I’ll mention that my creativity was fueled and inspired in part by reading a bunch of novels this year by Herman Hesse, Michael Ende, and KOOL A.D.

Creativity is life-blood for me.

12. Debt

Debt has been another *massive* theme since ~mid-2022 when I went through something of a financial implosion. 

At the worst point, I had accumulated something like ~$25-30k in credit card debt.

At that time I did also have (and still have) ~$10k or so of cryptocurrency investments, but I didn’t want to pull these funds out to repay some of the debt, because the crypto market was way down, and I was (and still am) confident that it would eventually recover and make new highs. 

I’m probably going to publish another piece sometime soon-ish in which I elaborate more on the debt situation and how I handled it.

I’m happy to report that now, in late 2023, I am back in the ‘green.’ Barring something totally unforeseen, I am expecting to pay off the last of the debt this month, and like I said, I still have a ~low-five-figure nest egg of investments, mostly in cryptocurrency. So, within a couple weeks, it looks like I’ll be totally debt-free and sitting on a growing nest egg for my family’s future. I’m majorly celebrating this!

From there, I have a fairly conservative plan to gradually-systematically withdraw most of my cryptocurrency at certain target levels during the next bull run. I already started withdrawing a small amount when Bitcoin recently hit $35k, and I intend to withdraw more at $40k, $45k, $50k, and so forth, all the way up to $150k, which I anticipate as the ~highest target Bitcoin is likely to hit during the next post-halvening bull run. The majority of my crypto will be withdrawn by the time Bitcoin hits $100k. 

For those curious, these images share a bit more about the likely post-halvening 2024-25 bull run and my strategy for ‘exiting’ a large portion of my position:

If you’re curious, this image and the next one show ChatGPT answering my questions about the next BTC halvening. This is the best evidence I know of indicating a likely crypto bull run in 2024-2025. I feel ~60-70% confident on this.

My conservative strategy for ‘exiting’ a large portion of my position from crypto during the next bull run.

I’ve been heavily over-exposed to crypto as an asset class, so I’m eager to withdraw funds to save up a 6-month cash-buffer of savings that I will likely hold on wise.com (where Americans can get 4.3% interest on savings), and then to diversify into index funds and other more conservative investments. I’ll also likely set some funds aside with the intention of buying more cryptocurrency once the bull market ends and Bitcoin (almost inevitably) crashes back down to ~$40k or so, following its historical pattern. As a father and family man nowadays, I’m definitely feeling more risk-averse than I used to be. 

Anyway, the biggest thing I want to mention about debt is the *psycho-energetic-emotional burden of debt*.

I imagine this differs from person to person, but for me, the debt has been like a constant splinter in the back of my mind for the past 1.5 years—a dark cloud hanging over basically everything else in my life, making it substantially harder to enjoy life. I’ve been extremely frugal in order to pay off the debt, and this has made it easy to slip into ‘scarcity’ and ‘survival mode,’ and difficult to feel expansive, abundant, and in tune with infinite possibilities. 

I read recently that the average American adult is ~$90k in debt, and this is appalling to me. It’s very difficult for me to see this as anything other than an indicator that the global economy is a wildly crooked psycho-energetic enslavement system. 

I realize that many people have large amounts of ‘good debt’—i.e. debt taken on in order to buy ‘appreciating assets’ such as houses—assets that are fairly likely to increase in value over time. 

Yet *even then*, I’m totally *not* sold on the notion of ‘good debt.’ For me at least, the psycho-energetic-emotional burden of debt—even supposedly ‘good debt’—is not worth it. Presently it feels like this will always be true for me. I do not want to owe anyone large sums of money ever again. This feels like a cage to me. 

Furthermore, ‘good debt’ can backfire. I would be surprised if there is not a major economic meltdown at some point in the next ~10-20 years, and then what? If the housing market crashes horribly, and if people suddenly can’t make their mortgage payments anymore, their ‘good debt’ suddenly ain’t ‘good’ anymore. So, yeah, for the foreseeable future, I plan to avoid debt like the plague. 

13. The ‘Silent Depression’

This leads me to the next theme—one closely connected to the previous: The current macro-economic situation on Earth.

The other day I saw someone on Reddit say we are in the ‘Silent Depression.’ 

This term felt apt. 

For the past ~1.5 years it has really seemed to me that we’re getting hit with the economic fallout of COVID-19 (and all the unwise governmental decision-making that surrounded that strange period of history), which has amplified the shakiness of the already-shaky 21st-century global economy. 

Inflation continues to rise, and money doesn’t go a fraction as far as it used to. 

For the Millennials and Gen Z, the ‘American Dream’ of affording a home with 2+ kids and a dog, is becoming more and more unrealistic. 

The middle class continues to evaporate, gradually propelling us toward a situation in which ‘the 1%’ grow ever more wealthy while the vast majority of people are part of the ‘precariat,’ patching together odd jobs, precarious gigs, and ephemeral freelance work to try to piece together a living. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen many signs of economic downturn in my own life and the lives of my friends these past couple years. 

It’s hard to say where this situation is heading, but it seems like eventually “something’s gotta give.” 

I don’t know what that will look like, but it increasingly feels like the global economic system is built on devil-magick and patched together with Scotch tape, Elmer’s glue, and rubber bands. 

[For more on this, read ‘The Religion of Money.’]

This is a system that is designed to put the average person in huge debt, forcing them to live life ‘in a deficit,’ forever grinding to try to ‘catch up’ yet never quite being able to—all the while padding the pockets of a tiny percentage of elites at the top. 

It’s basically a Pyramid Scheme, and eventually the chickens are almost certainly going to come home to roost. 

Lord only know what that is going to look like, but there’s a certain twisted fascination in watching this slow-motion train-wreck unfold. 

The best bet for disrupting, upending, and dethroning the legacy financial system is still almost certainly Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies, yet even crypto is being co-opted by the legacy system as institutional money floods into the fold. I believe there’s still a lot of money to be made in crypto for the everyman, but this is easier said than done—requiring substantial study, discipline, and mastery over one’s emotions. 

If you buy Bitcoin today and simply don’t touch it for 10 years, it’s likely to be worth ~10x or more than what you paid for it. But most people don’t have the stability, discipline, and risk-tolerance to be able to not touch their Bitcoin for 10 years, given the taxing emotional-rollercoaster that is the volatile crypto market. Not to mention that the only way to truly secure your crypto is to keep it in a hardware wallet, and most people (myself included up to this point) aren’t going to take the time to figure out how to do that (or don’t have a stable secure place to store a hardware wallet).

Anywho, at this point I don’t really know *what* sort of Deus-Ex-Machina-type Divine Intervention is needed to bring widespread economic liberation to this planet. 

It will be interesting to see what unfurls in the coming times.

My recommendation is to plug all leaks of superfluous spending, pay off all debts aggressively, spend less than you earn, and start systematically saving and learning to invest wisely.

14. The Rise of AI

Then there’s the AI boom.

I don’t have too much to say about it here, but I wanted to make note of it. 

I’ve used Midjourney and ChatGPT a *lot* in the past year. I use ChatGPT more than Google now, I think. It’s an insanely powerful tool. If you’re not using it yet, you’re likely falling behind, as others in your industry are almost certainly using it. 

A friend told me that with the help of ChatGPT, he’s able to code ~2-10x as efficiently as before, depending on the task/project.

Family members of mine have been using ChatGPT to generate incredibly polished and tactful letters in various contexts. 

Another friend showed me a ‘DeepFake’ yesterday in which an AI-generated sports-team coach was giving a press conference. The video was indistinguishable from real footage.

It’s hard to say how long it will be until AI starts replacing a lot of jobs, but this is likely on the way (though I’m much more agnostic than others regarding how cataclysmic or all-encompassing this ‘revolution’ is likely to be). 

I don’t know where the AI situation is heading, but it’s definitely changing everything—and fast. 

15. The ‘Great Weirdening’

With the rise of the internet and AI and ecocide and extinction-level risks and everything else that’s happening in the world, some say we are living through the ‘Great Weirdening’—a time in which everything is getting progressively weirder.

This resonates with me.

The future is here. We live in it. And it’s freakin’ weird. 

Digital technology has infiltrated every aspect of life. 

More and more people are ideologically captured by increasingly-bizarre cults of conspiracy theory or political dogma. 

All inherited maps and scripts regarding what life is ‘supposed to look like’ seem increasingly outdated.

We’re atomized, narcissistic, numbed-out, over-stimulated, and joining ever-stranger subcultures. 

We’re in a Liminal Zone, and no one *really* has any bloody idea what is going on.

It’s weird, man.

I feel a certain peculiar kinship with everyone else who is here at this time, living through this age. 

Where are we?

What is going on?

I don’t know, but let’s try to enjoy the ride. 

Bonus: Enjoy the Ride

“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” — Hunter S. Thompson

“Take it easy, but take it!” — Terence McKenna

“Enjoy is a type of worship.” — R.A.P. Ferreira

I asked my ~92-year-old grandfather the other day what advice he would give about life. 

He simply said, “Enjoy it.” 

Beautifully concise.

And easier said than done. 

We all wanna enjoy life, but how can we best do so in 2023?

With the Great Weirdening and Rise of AI and the Silent Depression and a thousand vices tempting us from every angle and all the inevitable ups and downs of human existence, how the heck can we learn to just enjoy the ride?

Darn good question.

I feel like I’m living my way into the answer—and I always will be.

Talk about an art form: The simple art of enjoying life as it comes.

The last couple years have been the most challenging of my life.

I’ve been seriously hammered and have nearly broken at times. 

I’ve also experienced countless moments of enjoyment.

It seems like there’s something here around enjoying life even when you’re not enjoying it.

That seems like the true holy grail.

Maybe it requires a bit of existential masochism. 

Letting it all happen.

Letting it all wash over you.

And even when it really, really hurts, appreciating it.

Appreciating that you’re breathing.

Appreciating the poetry of it all.

Finding spiritual wealth in the desert of suffering.

I’m getting better at this—slowly but surely.

Getting better at thanking God—and mostly meaning it—even when I don’t feel like thanking God.

And I guess that’s something to celebrate.

In Sum: God is the ultimate meta-theme.

God is the thread that weaves all the threads I’ve touched on—and all threads whatsoever—together.

God is All.

And God loves a crazy story.

And so do we.

So in this gnarly, hairy, tragicomic, dystopian-utopian, gorgeous-terrible Age of Transition we’re living through…

Perhaps we ought to stop pretending that it’s not fucking cool to be here right now.

Stop pretending that our souls are not stoked to explore this wild, mysterious terrain.

I mean, damn, THIS is an epic movie we’re living right now.

Stranger than fiction.

And we’re not just watching it on a silver screen….

We’re IN IT.

We get to participate.

We get to shape it.

My prayer is that we remember this more often.

When we’re over-fixated on the stressful minutiae of day-to-day life…

May we *zoom out*…

And remember the legendary-ness of being anything at all.

Remember that there is no discernible reason whatsoever why any of this should be possible.

Why there should be something rather than nothing.

Not to mention Infinity from nothing.

And yet…

Infinity is here.

Exploding orgiastically from every crevice and angle.

And it just so happens to look like this.

Like poker and pizza and porn and people and puppies and preposterous peculiarities of every imaginable texture.

If that ain’t a miracle, I don’t know what is, boys and girls.

Infinity is God.

And God is here.

Closer than your bones.

Holding you in perfect Love.

Imagine that.

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Peace Be With You,
J

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Jordan Bates is the author of Both, Neither, Far Beyond Either and other books.