A Practical Mystical View

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I am a practical person – project manager, a writer who manages his own works, and a cook who has tested recipes up to eighteen times to get them right. I’m also a mystic who mixes magic, meditation, Taoism, and syncretic paganism. I find that a mystical viewpoint is very practical.

The fact I even feel I have to say that says something about the American culture I live in (as well as some of my own personality, but that’s for later). Our culture seems to be awash in religion and spirituality and an obsession with supposed-practicality – to judge by the various self-help books and seminars I see. In reality our culture seems to mostly be interested in making money not actual life – which in many ways is sort of impractical.

Making money is not the end-all-and-be-all of life. In fact that’s where I find a mystical viewpoint useful – dare I say, practical.

Let’s take a look at a sort of “generic” mystical viewpoint. The world is composed of powerful living forces like gods and spirits. There are connections and correspondences in the world, an interconnected reality beneath our supposedly mundane world. People can alter themselves with meditations and practices, interact with this world via ritual and activity.

It is a view of an organic, living world that a person can adjust themselves to and interact with.

Viewing the world as organic – complex and connected – is useful and accurate. From the way disease spreads to complex cultural changes, our world is not like a mechanism on any larger-scale level. An organic viewpoint helps you get the world – as if it is alive. In fact . . .

Viewing the world as alive, as filled with living (or life-like) forces, is also accurate. We can argue if spirits or gods are literal, but as I’ve said before, they’re at least a useful concept to grasp the world. Understanding the world as alive, respecting it, fearing it, understanding it’s as complicated as you lets you live within it better (and know it may crush you so get out of the way).

Viewing oneself as able to improve and evolve in this living world is vital to growth and participating in the world. Sure some stuff about aligning forces, energies, whatever is bullshit. But the idea of learning to rethink yourself as a changing being lets you, well, change – or resist change when needed. You just need to be careful of the bullshit, which is often prominent AND has neat diagrams.

Viewing the world as something we evolving beings can participate, is both empowering psychologically and for real. We evolvable beings, connected to this living world, can work within it and live our lives better. We think in terms of interaction, be it energy flows, correspondances, or whatever.

The mystical worldview is being engaged. Which is, as I note, rather practical.

The “dressing” for all of this – correspondence charts, pantheons of gods, etc. are just tools for doing this. They are ways to wrap up these living complexities in ways we can understand and share. They’re a mix of art, advice, maps, and metaphors to help us deal with the world.

You’ll notice none of this asks what’s “real” because in many ways that’s not the point. The question is does it work and help us deal with this world – a practical one. For many of us who engage in mystical practice, the answer is “yeah, it works.”

Of course it only works if we’re also engaged in thinking and rethinking our practice. But the whole thing is about being engaged, isn’t it? Most people I know who are inclined to magic and such spend their lives refining practice and their understanding. Many a witch or magician is more skpetical than supposed skeptics.

And thus we arrive back at my conclusion – the mystical viewpoint is practical and useful, a way to interact with our living, wide world. Indeed I wish we explored this in a more secular, systemic way so others can learn from it.

But then again, that’s for another time. Or perhaps something for you and I to discuss and see what we and our friends can learn together.

– Xenofact

Saying and Learning

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I write a lot about religion, because it’s relevant, because of my interests, and for defense in a world of religious abuse and manipulation. I am in no way against religion – in fact I am actually for it. There’s a human instinct to mix art, ritual, socialization, and connection with the world that I think is actually a good thing – or at least unavoidable so we best put it to use.

It’s just we humans kind of screw it up. I wish we didn’t, so I make my own small contribution to the world analyzing things. OK, sometimes just complaining then analyzing.

In light of not complaining as much, I want to share an interesting view of what makes religion useful, especially among people with different practices. There’s what religion says, and then what you learn.

I’m not exactly interested in what your religion says all the time, except when my theological interests arise. Anyone can say anything, write anything, have a vision (due to real things or a series of plant-based ingestions). People are saying things all the time and it can be bullshit. I know I bullshit enough – just look at the way I go on.

Besides, as we all know what a religion say and what people do can be pretty disconnected. For examples, just turn on the news and pour yourself a stiff drink – or get some plant-based ingestibles ready.

What interests me is what did you learn in your practice. Give me something that you learned, how you applied it, and how it worked for you.

It’s sort of science and engineering. You try something, you learn something, you use it, and then when it works you have a valuable lesson. Show me an applicable lesson and you have my attention because you got something out of it. You’re also being vulnerable by pointing to actual results you got from your religious practice, and giving me an opportunity to question them!

In fact, a person who has a religiously-derived lesson that really works is sort of having a secular experience. If the lesson has actual cause-and effect then it’s something they can share outside of their religion. It also makes me take their religion – or at least them – a little more seriously.

I might even take the “say” part of your religion more seriously.

It’s a practical view, of course, and one I think is quite helpful. I’m not going to write off religious and mystical experiences, I’m going to look at results. I might not agree with the metaphysics, but I am curious as to what happens. We can backtrack later on the structure of things.

This all comes from an odd series of youthful experiences where I careened from fundamentalism to mysticism to atheism and back to experimental mysticism. There were probably plenty of other detours as well, but it eventually went around a simple thing – did I get some useful results.

It’s a pretty good measure. I look forward to hearing your learnings.

– Xenofact

A-holes In The Stacks

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A-holes In The Stacks

I love used bookstores, odd bookstores, and odd used bookstores. If you’ve read any of my writings, you know this. If not, well, hello, you must be new here – I’m Xenofact and I like bookstores.

One of the best thing about a good bookstore – and sometimes even more so a used one – is the amount of authors you encounter. Looking for one book leads to another, to another, and to another – often ones you didn’t expect to look for. A detour down a mysterious set of shelves can take you to a wonderland of discoveries. Then of course there’s whatever the store stocks that fits the tastes of the proprietors, another peek into the larger world.

Bookstores, the really good ones, are places of discovery. Even if you enter with a plan, you usually leave with something else.

However, you’ll also encounter works by authors that are, let’s be honest, a-holes. I’m not talking “oh they’re jerks,” I’m talking grifters, conspiritualists, abusive cult leaders, and so on. Since I usually haunt religion, philosophy, and science areas I probably see a lot more of this.

(It’s probably good I don’t go to the business section after these or I’d just end up in the fetal position.)

There’s something incredibly depressing to see a giant book by some grifting schemer who has only avoided jail as not enough of their cult has turned on him. It’s disturbing to see books by people replacing vaccines with quantum woo next to books on actual healthy practices. A bookstore, as thrilling as it is, can be quite depressing when you look at specific stock and know “someone is selling this, someone wants to buy this.”

But that’s the world, isn’t it? There are people out there who are exploitative – and some of them write books. Thank goodness there’s many good authors, past and present, writing actual, helpful stuff.

But that’s also discovery, what those stores allow. There’s a chance for surprise, for something new, even if you enter planning to get a specific book. Sometimes discovery is discovering something bad.

I suppose this is a time to remind ourselves to buy, read, promote, and give the good books, the ones that really help others out. There’s little use being impotently on the a-holes, we can just expose people to the good stuff.

And maybe when the a-holes get you down, enjoy the good stuff.

– Xenofact