diary of an unresolvable hurricane
~3,400 words on unknowing & meta-religion
note: a lot of this piece is about ‘nonduality’ and may be confronting — mainly recommended for those deeply called toward nondual exploration
well so a lot has changed in recent months
and in another sense nothing has changed
as Christmas approaches (happy holidays!), i am presently at a train station, on my way to Berlin to do some in-person work with a friend/client
looking forward to a few days of diving deep 1:1 in the kaleidoscopic cacophony of Berlin’s inimitable urban flurry
one train was cancelled so here i sit — in a Kamps cafe listening to piano jazz in the headphones while i pitter-patter some signals on the ol’ Apple keyboard
i’ve already seen so many people today — their faces jut forth like sheer cliffs or animate weathered sculptures, whispering stories in silent foreign tongues
so, what has changed?
well, it’s hard to say, really
in myriad ways i’m just the same ol’ jb
bein’ here, rockin’ back n’ forth, mostly chill, sometimes a lil’ this or a lil’ that
one way to say it is that i no longer believe in ‘enlightenment’
i no longer believe in ‘awakening’
it’s like i saw something i’d semi-noticed before — yet with a new cutting clarity
i saw that the questions really don’t have answers
i saw the profound sense in which
any story the mind could ever tell —
even the loftiest stories of God and Christ and
enlightenment and liberation and nirvana and heaven and so forth —
is just that:
a story
i saw that none of these stories can ever come anywhere close to capturing *even one single millisecond* of the ‘boring ordinary everyday miracle’ we call ‘life’
i sit here now with a Christ necklace around my neck — a treasured artifact from a trip to Vatican City earlier this year (i think it was ‘this year’? — time is strange…)
and i feel immense Love in my heart
and i feel the presence of Christ
and yet *i do not know what these words truly refer to*
yes, i can notice the phenomena the words gesture toward, yet…
i do not know what any of these phenomena *actually* are
it’s like the sublime mystery of it all dawned on me on a new level
i saw that inconceivability and unresolvability are *baked in* to the very fabric of all experience
it’s not just that we *don’t* know
it’s that we can’t know
we cannot know the slightest thing about the smallest speck of anything
i have no idea what a candy wrapper or a pigeon is
it’s not a ‘mystery’ in the sense that anything is ‘hidden’
there *is no* hidden knowledge to be found
there is *nothing to know*
there is *nothing to find out*
nothing definitive *can* be known
the most profound 5-MeO-DMT journey won’t reveal final conclusive evidence any more than taking an orgasmic dump reveals final conclusive evidence
because *there is no final conclusive evidence*
only more slipperiness & fluid-ness & morphing-ness that we desperately try to freeze within our finite frames
new experiences reveal new modes as being forever opens into more of itself — yet we don’t know what any of these apparently differentiated modes actually are
*slipperiness is all we ever experience*
*totally unpindownable slipperiness*
unresolvability is *what this is*
and unresolvability itself is unresolvable
emptiness too is empty
so where does that leave you?
well, it leaves you right where you’ve always been — here and now — as exactly what you’ve always been: the living mystery of you
Love is still important to me
God is still important to me
Christ is still important to me
much of the time i still feel inclined to capitalize these words out of reverence
and i can still have experiences of Christ and Love and God
and yet it’s now clear that no one knows what these words truly refer to
Christ does not know what Christ is
God does not know what God is
Love does not know what Love is
like *not at all*
*nothing* has *any idea* what *anything* is
jb is still jb
he’s a mostly-chill cat
a wacky whale
nothing about him needs to change at all
no experience he could ever have would ever be ‘wrong’ or ‘less enlightened’ than any other experience
because we have *no idea what anything is*
to know that anything is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ or ‘more enlightened’ or ‘less enlightened’ we would have to know what something is
and we have no flipping idea! hah!
pain and shame and grief and anger are not ‘less enlightened’ than anything else!
like everything else they appear as pure artistry in the instantaneous flash of completeness we call ‘now’ — the only thing we ever experience
there is no nirvana and there is no samsara
we have no idea what these words refer to
it’s all a giant hoax of language — a hypnosis
there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with it
linguistic spellcasting is one of the primary modes of ‘life’
life-intelligence naturally weaves linguistic spells and then gets lost in believing these spells
it’s quite astounding and magical that nowness does this
and it’s fun to play around with this
we can tamper with our own spellcasting to shape our reality-bubble into a sanctuary rather than a torture chamber
yet the key thing to see is that, we cannot actually say that ‘sanctuary’ is better than ‘torture chamber’ because *we do not know what these words refer to*
the only thing they could possibly refer to is the only thing we ever know: this instantaneous now-flash of bottomless pixelation
that doesn’t mean we won’t have our preferences! of course we will. yet we cannot say that our preferences in any way represent ‘objective truths’
preferences are also total mystery
basically what i’m saying is that there are no ‘fixed meanings’
as Nagarjuna put it, “all philosophies are mental fabrications. there has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things”
that includes all Nagarjuna’s philosophies and all my philosophies and all philosophies of ‘nonduality’ and ‘emptiness’ and ‘buddhism’ and ‘entheogenic mysticism’ and ‘christianity’ and ‘science’ and ‘atheism’ and so on and so forth
and that is not to say that these philosophies are not beautiful! they’re fully included as wondrous poetries — fascinating art-works that spin fresh ways of seeing into being
meaning-making is a free-for-all
we’re totally free to spin up whatever cathedrals of meaning we like
and those who are skilled will tend toward weaving sanctuaries rather than torture chambers
at least according to their own preference. one man’s sanctuary may be another man’s trash heap. that is why each one must discern for himself what sort of meaning-structure feels cozy for his inner child
in this way we are all magicians, quite literally continuously conjuring worlds into being through the enchantment of our ‘spells’ — the primordial archetypal symbols & words we hold most dearly within the cavernous psyche
this is astonishing! what an impossibly bizarre and stunning state of affairs! i mean c’mon, life is really, really, really, *really* strange, man
so yeah: basically, tell yourself whatever stories make you feel warm and nourished and at home in this thing we call ‘life’
no story is more true than any other — or at least we have absolutely no way of knowing that — so let thine hair down and cast forth from thine wizard-wand whatever meaning-scrolls thou fancieth!
hah!
stories i appreciate
personally i enjoy stories of family and love and coziness and honor and faith and trust and miraculousness and natural blossoming and life-as-art and wild freedom and silly play and thanksgiving and revelation and sanctification and presence and heart and flow and plenitude and all beings on the path to the ever innocent heart, eventually discovering the home they never truly left
i enjoy the story that says every occurrence is a gift and you’re absolutely perfect in this moment, without changing a hair on your head — and that you can never wander so far from home that you cannot return at a moment’s notice — return to the heartwarming bonfire of love which ever emanates generously from the heart of our true father & mother — the heart of now
i enjoy the story that says you can fully trust life in every moment exactly as it is
i enjoy the story that says there are gems in the mud and that the wound is the place where the light enters you
i enjoy embodying a devotional attitude of giving thanks daily to Christ’s Loving Grace for the chance to breathe and be and see and eat and drink and listen to music and love my daughter and wife and family and friends
i find that these meaning-structures seem to provide a healthy scaffolding that supports smooth functioning in ‘the world’
and i feel to note that these meaning-structures did not simply appear from nowhere. i didn’t just pull them out of thin air. they are based on experiences and revelations and an honoring of those revelations
and yet i guess what i now seem to have seen clearly is that none of these revelations and stories constitute Final Fixed Objective All-Encompassing Truth
and they never could
because truth is not objective or fixed or final
in a profound sense there is no ‘truth’ at all
‘truth’ as a concept only makes sense in relation to ‘untruth’
yet again, we have absolutely no way of assessing whether one story is ‘more true’ than another
literally all we ever know is an instantaneous flash of limitless cascading information
a kaleidoscopic rorschach splash of infinitely detailed wowness
and we suppose that language could ever say what that is? hah!
no, it can’t…
can’t even graze it or approach it…
sure, language can kind of vaguely gesture toward certain interpretations of all these colors and shapes in a heavy-handed and highly reductive way…
and if we don’t look closely we can easily believe we’ve actually managed to say something accurate about experience
yet it cannot be done
upon closer inspection, all statements are revealed as utter partializations
even our loftiest religious poetry or nondual pointing
again, this doesn’t mean our greatest stories are not beautiful!
they’re totally gorgeous!
and this is not a statement of ‘nihilism’ or a statement that ‘life is meaningless’
to the contrary: life is ERUPTING with suggestiveness and flavorfulness and juiciness and dancingness and meaningfulness
you just can’t ever precisely pin down a fixed meaning — because unpindownability is fundamentally ‘baked in’
the genius of great religions
the genius of the great religions is that they have created inspiring, uplifting, highly useful & functional meaning-systems that serve as excellent orienting mechanisms within ‘the world’ — and even point beyond themselves toward the Living Mystery, for those who are called toward that exploration
this is why one is unwise to be too quick to cast aside religion
i do not recommend being too quick to assume that you can doodle something on the back of a napkin that will serve as a more beautiful & functional meaning-system than that which your ancestors fashioned & refined over centuries or millennia
we’re free to remix and add new flavors and infuse our own artistic spice of course — and as you’ve probably noticed i’m a fan of doing so — yet i’ve personally found a great deal of solidity, stability, clarity, & rootedness by plugging into the sequoia-like ancestral super-structure of meaning that was passed down to me. this provides a certain ‘ancient backbone’ of meaning-structures & ceremonial practices proven to fare well in the ever-shifting tides of destiny
great religions are not merely arbitrary stories. they are psycho-magical technologies & hyper-archetypal wisdom-dense stories that have been dialed in over the course of aeons
and again, stories conjure forth entire worlds. i intuit that when such systems have been invested with great masses of thought-energy across centuries, they ‘come alive’ in ways that are profound and immersive. the all-powerful chameleon of nowness shapes itself into mystical experiences that resonate with the heart of such collectively-vitalized meaning-systems
as i’ve shared previously, i’ve had many visceral experiences of Jesus Christ touching and opening my Heart in ways that are unspeakably sacred and intimate and moving… i have wept on many occasions in the face of the supra-personal Love these experiences have conveyed to me
this is why i am a lover of Christ who honors and integrates much of the ancestral Christian operating system that was handed down to me — it is in many ways a highly wise, gorgeous, and pragmatic meaning-structure that functions especially well in the context of close-knit long-term family life
i can fully honor the sacred revelations of God’s Grace & Christ’s Love that i’ve experienced — without needing to insist that these revelations represent Final Fixed Objective Truth
i can fully honor my most sacred experiences while allowing them to remain as living mysteries
admittedly this can be difficult to do. it seems that for years i was not quite able to do this — and even now, it still feels kinda foreign
the natural human tendency is to clamp down on revelatory mystical experiences and insist that they objectively prove the Final Truth of whatever one’s cherished mythology happens to be
it can feel like a diminishment of the sacredness of these experiences to admit that we don’t ultimately know what they are or what they mean in any fixed, final sense
similarly, it can feel like a diminishment of the sacredness of Love to admit that we don’t ultimately know what our own family members *are* in any fixed, final sense
this need not be the case though
the sacredness of experience need not be diminished and can actually be amplified by the recognition of inherent mysteriousness & inconceivability
for this recognition reveals the truly bottomless infinity & unsayable richness of all experience
none of these experiences are rendered ‘less than’ by virtue of noticing their non-finitude
the experiences and people are still *fully themselves* and magnificent as ever
they’re just seen not to fit within any kind of fixed or final meaning-structure
the infinity of my daughter & all of life
on one level i deeply, heartfully, lovingly know my daughter Lila
and simultaneously i have no idea what she is — she is a flame of pure mystery — and i wholly love that mysterious flame
on one level i profoundly know myself — been chillin’ with jb my whole life!
and simultaneously i have zero clue what jb is — he is an ever-shifting flurry of weirdness inseparable from the ever-shifting flurry of weirdness we call ‘now’
i love jb in all his humanness and bottomlessness!
we intimately know life, for life is all we ever experience
yet simultaneously we have no idea what life is
for life is inconceivable slipperiness, sliding water-like through our fingers before we could ever get a handle on it
none of our stories apply
life is too close, too simple, too morph-y, too impermanent, too detailed, too subtle to ever be caged by a fixed meaning-structure
i can see why some say that no one could actually ‘want’ ‘awakening’
there’s something about this seeing that feels almost ‘unhuman’
it can feel kinda like peering behind the curtain and seeing something you weren’t supposed to see
i don’t really agree that no one could want this though
that feels overly dramatic
this feels like it is what i wanted
because i wanted the truth
i wanted to know the truth of what i am
i wanted love
i wanted grace
i wanted peace
i wanted wholeness
i wanted freedom
and in a fascinating way i found all those things
just not in any way i ever imagined i would
i hesitate somewhat to use words like ‘freedom,’ ‘love,’ ‘peace,’ ‘grace,’ ‘wholeness’…
because such words can easily play into the endless ‘spiritual’ tendency to overhype and mythologize ‘awakening’ — another word that sounds too lofty
yet there is a simple rest here
a simple freedom
a freedom to be as i am
a freedom from needing fixed meanings
a freedom from needing to know
what is seen is just what is seen
without a need to tell a big dramatic story about it
and if big dramatic stories arise, that’s ok too
anything can arise
now can look like anything
and i’m free from the tendency to make any of it ‘wrong’
and even if a story about ‘wrongness’ naturally arises, that’s ok too
it’s all just flowing through, being as it is
and there is an inherent completeness to it
none of it can be pulled apart
now shines forth as a seamless happening
a wholeness
everything included
nothing rejected
and the flavor of that all-inclusivity is love
grace is seen in the way life lives itself
without me needing to ‘lift a finger,’ these words write themselves
before we could ever manipulate the moment in any way, it is already gone
its appearance is its vanishing
a continual spontaneous-instantaneous FLASH of done-ness
all things continuously showing up in a finished condition of pure suchness
simply being as they are
now and now and now and now
this includes any feeling of unease or fear or discomfort or guilt or any story that says “this should be some other way”
there’s no problem with any of that
that’s just what the wholeness looks like in that moment
and then it’s gone
none of it can trap you because you don’t actually know what any of it is
and because its duration is zero — it doesn’t last for any amount of time
of course it can seem very solid and lasting and human and those textures are spectacular and fully included
but if you look closely there is a nonstop dancing buzzing-ness in all the sense-fields
all phenomena are alive and vibrating
this instantaneous energy field of nowness does not stop morphing
the simple rest & peace & trust is felt as you see that it’s all intelligently dancing itself
and that you don’t need to do anything or interfere with anything
simplicity lives itself — no maintenance required
so yeah, in these highly unexpected ways, this nowness is freedom, love, rest, wholeness, grace, and peace
and this nowness is the only ‘truth’ we ever know
you can never step outside of present-experiencing
give it a try and see what happens
no one has ever found the past or future
again, these words cannot accurately capture experience
any more than frantic monkey noises can accurately capture experience
it’s like trying to capture a hurricane in a glass jar
good luck
it’s fun to try though : )
and clearly it is my natural inclination as a ‘karmic entity’ — to try to poetically evoke THIS and perhaps share something that could be valuable, useful, or liberating for others
all i’m pointing at with these words is your experience now as it is
your experience is already ‘fully enlightened’
your experience is simple rest, freedom, & wholeness
‘awakening’ is just a simple noticing that this is the case
and the key portal to that noticing is the portal of unresolvability
directly *seeing* why no word or story or belief or view or philosophy could *ever* be accurate
and again, from another angle, there is no ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’
these are more fabrications
there’s just experience as it is
and there is no need for your experience to be different from how it is
can you honestly say that anything needs to be added to or subtracted from this moment?
can you feel the simple wholeness and the freedom of that?
of not needing anything to be different?
there’s no need for you to ‘awaken’
jb is not ‘more awake’ than you or anyone
you’re already fully awake
experience is awakeness
you may notice that if you like — or not
either way is ok
there is no need for your experience to be different from how it is
so let it be
be as you are
be you
nothin’ to do but be you baby
nothin’ to do but be you
i love you
warm bear hug,
j
p.s. if you dug this you’ll prolly also dig this other piece: a lot of what i wrote about here seems quite connected to the ‘ego death’ i wrote about ~6 weeks ago:
p.p.s. a lot of the recent posts on my other substack ‘ever innocent heart’ are also highly relevant for those drawn to ‘nonduality’
simple freedom: an upcoming journey i’ll be hosting
if you’re deeply fascinated by all this ‘nondual awakening’ stuff you will probably enjoy participating in a journey i will be leading starting in ~early 2025
similar to lion heart, my intent is to craft a gifted ~3-week experience that leads toward a likely invitation to join an ongoing monthly-subscription-based journey on a sliding scale that meets you where you are
if that sounds groovy you’re welcome to already join us in the simple freedom channel on telegram, where all the communications for the journey will take place:
1luv,
j
recent / relevant vids i made on youtube:
jordan is a friend, space-holder, rapper, and author of five books. he’s been sharing a lot on youtube lately so you’re welcome to subscribe over there if you’d like to support his work. you can also find his favorite songs he’s made on Spotify here: