Xenofact

Good for the Spirit, Good for the Mind

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As I write this there’s a huge, understandable panic that AI is being used by students so much they don’t know how to read and analyze it. If you are reading this in a future years removed from this essay, I hope you live in a world where AI isn’t such a concern, and you’reNOTin some post-apocalyptic disaster.

Anyway, whatever your chronological state, here in 2025 it’s been quite a concern. If you let AI write for you, analyze for you, etc. you are essentially outsourcing your thinking and your humanity. You will not develop skills you need to read books and understand things, and the skills you do have will decay.

This in turn made me think about spiritual and philosophical writing and how it trains you to read, analyze and understand. For the sake of brevity to encompass such things for self-development I shall call them spiritual works here.

When we sit down with a spiritual work we are attempting to contemplate, grow, and understand some very serious issues. We bring to it a desire to understand and grow, to engage with the work. The attitude of becoming involved in the work is there at the start.

In turn, the engagement is needed.

Spiritual works are about deep issues, and you will find yourself pausing to contemplate and analyze. We’ve all experienced moments where a paragraph or a page can hold our attention for a half hour. In spiritual works, you may find yourself going over something word by word just thinking what it means.

Spiritual works often use symbolism and metaphor as that may be easy to communicate complex truths, represent the otherwise indescribable, or lead you around a bit to help you learn. Symbolism also helps you think, how the symbols work together, what they really mean, and so on. Again, you are engaged with the work, connected to it.

Finally, many spiritual works are often grounded in a place, a person, an experience, a lineage, etc. To engage with spiritual work is to engage with much more than a book or a menial or a series of poems – it’s to learn about who produced it and the situation that led to it. One small book can lead you to a world of context – and a greater point of view.

Reading a good spiritual work teaches you to read, analyze, understand. A person with an interest about such issues can, in time, give themselves ersatz literary training. I once read a book called DIY MFA about how a person can read and write and analyze to gain similar experiences to getting an MFA – and that feels very familiar in spiritual writing.

So in a world of AI writing and AI reading, remember our spiritual pursuits. Sitting down with a book on philosophy or meditation or metaphysics isn’t just enriching morally or spiritually – it’s enriching literately. Your wrestling with ethics or breath meditation or divinities also helps you learn to read, analyze, and understand.

Just another reason to do it, I suppose.

-Xenofact

There I Sit In Mistrust

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When I meditate, I realize sometimes how much of our identity is not trusting ourselves.

As noted (and repeated for newcomers) I do a watch-a-slow-even-breath meditation, refining it over time to be as slow and even as possible. It’s derived from Taoist practices (especially my over-mentioned Secret of the Golden Flower), both the breathing and larger practices and concepts such as Yin and Yang or mindful “warm attention.” It’s simple, and as anyone who practices meditation knows, that simplicity is always deceptive because when you start meditating things happen and come to the surface.

Including realizations about identity.

Meditation is a practice that has you sitting there with yourself, doing your thing, and often screwing up, having unexpected insights, and often both. You may realize how distractable you are, or have sudden memories surge to the surface – and good texts will give you advice on such things. I think that these “problems” aren’t problems, but educational opportunities, and often contemplate them.

One thing that I noticed is how much of our identity is being against ourselves. Enough I want to share.

When you meditate, it’s easy to get upset with your distractions or that you can’t do things right. You try to push down what’s in your mind or isolate feelings you don’t want to deal with. There you are, trying to meditate and focus and you’re also breaking yourself up, maybe to the point that you’re angry with yourself. Ever had a meditation session where you feel like you’re in a wrestling match?

But is that any different from how we normally are? How many of us berate ourselves for a choice? How many times a day do you worry that you did something wrong or aren’t a good person? How often do you try to cut off pieces of your own mind? I’m sure you have plenty of experiences like that – almost certain you had a few the very day you read this

It’s bizarre, when you look at it. So much of our identity is not being turned against ourselves. We identify with battling against an obsession. We constantly berate ourselves internally for a behavior we just keep doing. How much of us is not liking us? And is this self-flagellation doing us any good?

(Answer: no).

Realizing how much of our identity can be self-hatred was a useful insight for me in my meditations. Once you see it, you can be aware of it and maybe address it. Or you could berate yourself for it and further the problem, but let’s not do that.

I find that the lessons of meditation come to the fore here too. Meditation is about sitting and doing, being there, doing changing or breathing or whatever and moving on. Just because you have a thought you don’t like doesn’t mean you have to get angry. Just because you had a bad idea doesn’t mean you act on it. What arises is part of the experience and you choose what you do, but it’s all you.

There’s no reason to hate yourself. You’re whoever you are now – and whoever makes the choice on what to do next. You can also take the time to analyze how you got where you are – that’s fine, you’re who you are, and whoever got you here to realize you may have some self-loathing.

It’s amazing what meditation can do when you’re sitting there not doing much. Kudos to all those over the aeons who taught us and keep teaching us.

-Xenofact

We Can Be Heroes and Probably Shouldn’t

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We’re awash in heroes today. Funny, it doesn’t seem like we’re any better off.

I’ve had an interest in conspiracy theories and their impact since the late 80s, at first in extremist groups, then the further out beliefs. I came to realize over time that many figures in the Conspiracy Sphere were so-called heroes. The radio personalities, the pamphleteers, the shaky-handed writers of only-vaguely concealed bigotries declared themselves Heroes. They were always being attacked by The Conspiracy, they were anointed by God, or whatever. Every Big Name was also The Big Good Guy.

That’s not surprising. When you make it to the top, people want a story. When you manage to publish a book, you better have a story of why you have to read it. A lot of Conspiracy Stuff is grift, and grifters gotta market, and no one is going to trust Divorced Guy WIth A Medium Sized Library of Bullshit to explain the world.

As I contemplated this and was jotting down thoughts of heroism, I realized how the idea of the Heroic Conspiracist had evolved in the Internet Age. It had become democratized – everyone was a hero.

People regularly posted to message boards, supposedly giving insider information – which is indeed how we got the “Q” debacle. They could be heroes, even if they made it up – and maybe in time they believed it. You’re only a few posts from being declared a Crusader for Truth.

The social disaster of “Q” created many personalities decoding “Q drops” and lending their own theories to a burgeoning katamari of dangerous nonsense. If you worked at it, social media would let you build a following and yes-and your way to fame, if not fortune. Also sometimes there was fortune.

I detected an uptick in the UFO community of heroic stories, often around the Secret Space Programs where people were mindjacked into other lives by aliens. There were plenty of stories of space heroism, echoing tales of past lives from previous New Age communities. You no longer had to be yet another reincarnation of a famous occultist, you could be your own Spiritial Cosmic Fighter!

Anyone could invent themselves as a hero and ride the conspiracy theories to fame and recognition and feeling special. I’ve seen it called Main Character Syndrome, Protagonist Syndrome, etc. We certainly need a name for it.

Now this isn’t exactly new. Our media is awash in “heroes” you can pretend to be like. American Christianity tells people they’re in a great Crusade – and is also media fueled – but other religious trends have declared people part of some Great Heroic Effort as well. It’s just I think this got amped up in the Internet age to the point where we’re all supposedly heroes.

Social media would be glad to reinforce it for you if you had a good pitch and persistence. Believers didn’t just believe, they backed each other up, creating a web of confirming the heroism of each other. You could always find an audience to confirm your stories of heroism against aliens or the Illuminati or whatever. You can even make money at it.


It’s heroes all the way down. Sure some people jockey to be the Big Names, but you can get a little reinforcement here and there.

Of course it’s not heroism. It’s grifting. It’s loneliness. It’s people who need therapy not social media. But everyone gets to be a hero, even though none of them are heroic. Heroism has been hollowed out, lined with mirrors, and turned into a self-reflective room for personal aggrandizement.

Now I wonder how a world deals with so many false heroes – and how the would be heroes themselves cope. How do you step back from a lie and accept humanity? How do you deal with the problems of the world that need more of us just getting their hands dirty?

I don’t have an answer to that, except maybe some kind of psychological or spiritual or media trend at self-reflecting. A simpler, more involved, life. I don’t have any answers beyond vague speculation

I’m not hero I’m just a guy and I’m not sure yet what a world of fallen heroes will mean.

(Special thanks to the podcast Knowledge Fight, who’s further examination of Bill Cooper’s insanely plagiarized work helped me solidify this idea).

-Xenofact