writing

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

Hand The Book Across Time

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There are tales I’ve heard about Chinese scholars hiding their books in the walls of their home. Barring a fire, and even then, their writings would be be preserved. As I look at our troubled world here in the 21st century, I can understand that mindset. I die, the book lives on.

There’s something about humans saving knowledge.

We transmit stories by tales and song and riddles. We handed off culture in a marathon race among minds before we could write. What words and stories that are in your brain have passed on in some permutation since our ancestors hunted with stone-tipped spears?

How many archaeological digs find caches of wisdom? Scrolls in pots, carefully preserved bamboo strips, lovingly hidden paper, passionately engraved stone. Untold millions of people leaving behind their knowledge.

Then there are the transcriptionists and later the press. People copying book after book after book, at first by hand, then by block and plate, and today by computer and printer. There are people who’s lives are just the transmission or keeping of documents.

Think of the humorous findings by translators and relic-hunters, things preserved because people just keep records. How the internet laughs at terrible copper merchant Ea-Nasir. How we laugh in agreement at young Japanese Emperor Uda lovingly writing about his cat. Humans just keep records, and those so often outlive us – and today we shake our head at that merchant or pet our cat and feel connected to the ruler of a country long dead.

When evil threatens, we hide and preserve and transmit and print. For all that is lost to history, to time, to paper that frays and ink that fades, we have saved so much. We have opposed tyrants and we have avoided censorship, often at the cost of lives. We will die – or kill – to save information.

There is something so human in preserving the word. Something that is transcendent of the individual. To be human is to be information, to be transmission. The you that you are now, the me that I am now, are just momentary permutations of something much larger.

When I look at the world and all its suffering and problems, then back to all these singers and writers and printers, I think I understand. We’ve all been handing things off down the line since we could first think and communicate. Even as we find new ways to burn our planet and destroy each other, that urge lives on.

We hide the book in the walls, we sing the song, for that will build or save the future despite the present.

–Xenofact

Not Alone Among The Books

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As I mentioned several times before, I like to read various Taoist documents as it helps me build a mental “ecosystem.” That ecosystem helps me understand my meditative work, develop philosophical understanding, and better connect to the world. However, I noted another benefit as of late – a feeling of understanding.

I read of historical figures whose tales border on or are legend, often presented by Taoist writers as examples or cautionary tales. I find some of them relatable, in virtues, in flaws, and in experiences. Across the centuries, the aeons, I feel kinship, even in my own mistakes.

There are authors who comment on their experiences, plans, and desires. There, reading a book from a thousand years ago, I get them. I understand what they’re trying to do, what they’re experiencing, and even their mistakes. Sometimes you learn a lot by going “I understand why you said that” and “been there.”

Then there’s all the advice and observations these ancient Taoist writers provide. Timeless stuff, the same observations, even the same issues, are things they wrote about and things I learn about now. It’s not just that it’s useful, someone wrote it down to help others, someone going through what I went through.

Then when you look at these books hundreds or thousands of years old, you realize that you have it because of a chain of scribes and printers transcribing it. Someone made sure you had this book, dipping their pen into ink, arranging blocks on the press. You have that book because of people who did that – and if you’re someone like me, that’s someone like us.

Finally, there’s the translators, some of whom leave their own notes and commentary, sometimes even their own experience getting the book done. These are the people that made sure you can read the book – and make sense of metaphors, cultural tropes, and so on. They did this for a reason.

All these books make me feel not just informed, but less alone. There’s people like me, people who I get and relate to. Whatever wisdom I gain from their works and efforts, I also gain a sense of camaraderie.

Maybe this also explains some of the thrill I get sharing books that matter to me. A book may find someone who connects to it like I do, and there’s one more person feeling that connected to all those who came before.

-Xenofact