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Mining the Depths of Reason: One Man’s Journey

Over the past few years, I’ve done a great deal of harm to myself. I feel it in my body and I can see it in my face. My avatar’s lifespan has probably been shortened by several years, if not decades, due to the intensity of psychic, psychological, and emotional energies that have been emerging and culminated in the paradigm-shifting events of 2020–2021. The psychological warfare we all went through (and will continue to be subjected to daily) was undoubtedly a peak experience, but for people like me and those who are similar to us, this is just a part of the ongoing inner/outer mental/spiritual struggle that we face throughout our lives.

I’m not a victim, nor am I seeking martyrdom. That’s just the way it is, in my view. I share this story in the hopes that those who can relate will learn something about themselves or be reminded that we all struggle in life, and, in the end, it’s all good.

Recent events have a distinct sense of transition and forced social split. Those that want to wake up will, while the remainder will remain as unconscious background players, or NPCs. What is true is I’m not here to save anyone, least of all myself. No real world would behave in this way, and the more I look into things, the less reality this construct shows me. It’s clever, and deeply engaging, but it’s all made up.

But, Why?

We are on the 3d plane to experience physical and material existence to the best of our ability so our non-physical, spiritual consciousness can learn and grow till our physical body passes on. 

— Franklin O’Kanu

My waking-life obsession and natural impulse has been and will always be to expose falsehoods and deceitful people, to uncover long-standing social, cultural, scientific, spiritual, philosophical, and logical fallacies, and to inspire, motivate, and confront humanity on its difficult journey toward innerstanding ourselves and the world we live in.

That’s quite a mouthful. It’s a grand idea. It’s optimistic. Lofty ambition for a lightworker. Through the years, I have listened through libraries of “channeled” recordings, explored various forms of spiritualism, new-age nonsense, and metaphysical research. I have owned and disowned a wide range of beliefs and opinions. Over time, I have been able to sift through much of that ambient, interstitial, and liminal noise to discern tangible truths, but the goalposts keep moving, so to speak. The majority of it becomes inner work and unlearning in order to reintegrate, recapitulate, and remember what was always known — which has little to do with my outward experienced reality. It’s a process that frequently renders me exasperated and depressed. I’m embarrassed by how easily I’ve been duped by convincing but erroneous ideas, fervent but psychotic experts and authorities, and manipulative, dishonest “thought leaders.”

I am naturally open-minded and trusting, and I have certainly been credulous (read gullible).

Much of what we are exposed to in this realm is disempowering and deceptive propaganda, misinformation, reality-altering false narratives, and fantastical nonsense. Undoubtedly, there will be more difficult and painful lessons to learn. To avoid cynicism and a general sense of futility, a concerted effort is required. But that is precisely the point; the journey is the reason for our brief existence.

Clemens Van Lay – Unsplash

Innocence and Arrogance

I have always felt like an outsider.

I was shy, timid, and introverted as a child. I would go along to get along, presenting myself in ways that were neither imposing nor disruptive to those around me. I would blend in and act in ways to avoid being noticed, never ruffling feathers, never “getting in trouble,” and, of course, never standing out. I enjoyed being helpful and making things better, but if given the option, I would avoid taking on responsibility or getting involved. I was content, but not happy, to finish second in most situations, such as school classes or competitions. Getting good grades in public school didn’t require much effort. It was cowardly and pattern- and habit-forming. Unfortunately, I was surrounded by enablers who only made matters worse in the long run. I can’t blame them because kindness isn’t usually regarded as a flaw. However, it is not always genuine. Fortunately, a few forthright friends did occasionally challenge my numb complacency and safety-seeking.

I learned to play a variety of sports, though soccer and hockey were my favorites. How very Canadian. Growing up in the 1980s, my heroes were Pelé and Gretzky. As a child, I remember watching instructional videos in the library. I enjoyed making plays and assisting my teammates in scoring goals. My preferred position was center midfield, and if such a position existed on the ice, I would have played it. I was a defensive forward instead. I was a soccer player for about a dozen years and a referee for several more. I only ever played hockey for two years, in the Pee Wee league. I started years later than everyone else, was awkward and clueless, but a few good men saw me flailing and assisted me in getting sorted out and on the ice. My mother was a vocal supporter at our games, but when she saw boys getting their skulls rattled as we grew and became stronger, she chose to pull me out of hockey, which deeply hurt me. It was over just as I was getting comfortable on the ice, making plays and scoring goals. There was no discussion, just eerily quiet early weekend mornings when I needed someone to drive me to the rink. Of course, I didn’t make a big deal about it. I was a good little boy. And an agreeable wimp.

And I understand. No self-respecting parent wants to see their child get hurt. However, such overprotective avoidance is harmful to the soul and a complete lie in this short life. We will be injured. We will survive terrifying and potentially fatal experiences. Or we will not. I’ve “nearly died” at least fifteen times, and nothing anyone could have done to prevent these events would have made a difference. We must beat up, bruise, and break ourselves in order to grow up and out of our childish ways. We must constantly shatter and reshape our identities, ideologies, and beliefs, lest we become aimless, vacuous, and stagnant. Injury is necessary for character development, self-awareness, endurance, entrepreneurial spirit, and resilience. Scarring is not.

My mother tried to make up for it in ways over the next decade or so, but it was all rather moot as I wasn’t able to trust either of my parents much. Not for things I really cared about. They were always physically there, of course, but the emotional rift was permanent. To me, they were related but un-relatable. When I was passionate about hockey, it was taken away. When I was passionate about being a musician and pursuing that as a career, it was “you need a backup, something steady to pay the bills, then you can make music.” That, or “you need to get certified, have some diplomas so people respect you.” That’s all well and good, but show me, don’t tell.

It was all mathematical, really. I had no genuine ambition, and despite the fact that I needed someone to challenge and encourage me, I rejected my mother’s efforts. Dad had a steady hard labor job that provided food and a roof over our heads, but he abused alcohol to cope. Mom attempted to find her purpose through a variety of careers, struggling to find a meaningful way to pursue her interests in metaphysical, esoteric, and energy work.

Looking back, I realize that I’ve routinely held myself back from achieving any notable proficiency, and perhaps it was due to a lack of anyone in my corner supporting me. Let’s be real. An actualized man, in my opinion, requires an embodied, empowered woman, a grounding, nurturing force of nature, and an equal partner to hold him accountable to his own goals and ideals. Someone for and with whom to create and sustain a fulfilling life. This is not a romantic or outmoded notion. It is fundamental to this realm’s duality of masculine and feminine energies. We can certainly accomplish great things on our own, but the struggle is orders of magnitude more difficult. Hidden, and possibly unacknowledged, metaphysical compromises will inevitably show their ugly heads and project out into your life in unexpected and debilitating ways.

Finally, I would suggest that the only thing worse than going it alone is having a partner who contradicts your values, goals, and aspirations. That’s the environment I grew up in, and it’s not ideal. There is no doubt that people change. What matters most is that you communicate with your partner in a forthright and authentic manner. Don’t allow yourself to devolve into a passive-aggressive cantankerous type, hanging on for dear life, corrupting your spirit and souring your soul for years and decades out of some misplaced obligation. It’s all gone in a flash.

Heidi Fin – Unsplash

Focus in Many Parts

It was enough for me to prove to myself what I was capable of. It didn’t matter how many hours of practice it would take to get there, mostly on my own time and in my own space. I was more inclined toward a concentrated effort, as I wanted to be as good as I could be, as quickly as I could be, as I’d likely move on to something else before long. This is a terrible pattern, as I find myself having to re-learn important skills I was at one time getting to be pretty damn good at. I’ve never had the drive to become the best at anything, unfortunately. That ingredient has always been missing in my life, much to my demise. It could be as simple as needing constant validation or a lack of consistent support, but that seems rather cliché. What’s true is that we can’t succeed in a vacuum, and that it does in fact require more than our own errant impulses and fickle choice-making to get anywhere in life. My bias toward solitude has done me little favor in this regard, but it has served me in other ways.

Because most things came easily to me, it was predictably difficult to maintain a steady, consistent effort. I’m quite intelligent, but not very smart. I’ve never wanted to be famous or gain material wealth in this world, but the freedom that comes with having a large sum of money in the bank cannot be overlooked. Perhaps I allowed my laziness to become more prominent. Perhaps it was because, as I grew older, money became my primary concern, whether it was in the pursuit of a goal or the need to make ends meet. Perhaps it was my old pal depression, which fosters and facilitates procrastination.

I was shy and introverted, right up into my late teen years. For many years, when I was free and able to dive in deeply, music would be my saving grace, providing me with countless hours of experimental, physical, spiritual, and creative joy. Whenever I have the space, wherever I move (and I’ve moved a lot), I set up a little studio for myself in the hopes of recapturing those soulfully satisfying moments. They are fewer and farther between these days, but I have other enjoyable outlets. Perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It would be a shame to chase the tallest peaks at the expense of the rest of the journey. I’m not the same man I was 25 years ago, and dragging him forward in perpetuity seems fruitless and agonizing.

I am empathic and sensitive to the energies around me. I would therefore find myself instinctively getting away from the incessant noise of others, preferring solitude for most of my life. I was a “nice boy,” a “good son,” and a “good brother” as far as my mother was concerned. Her older brother was a brutish shitdisturber when they were children. Unfortunately, she was on the receiving end of some of his anger and abuse. Growing up in communist Yugoslavia would most certainly have had its challenges, so it’s understandable how and why one acts out their angst, anxiety, and other frustrations, most often upon those nearest to them. My mother wanted to make sure I was never that kind of man, though in the process, she unwittingly ensured my resentment toward her for decades to come. In truth, I had allowed for the manipulation. I’d adopted and played blindly into that role, as I didn’t want to add to either of my parent’s burden — or perhaps on some level, I didn’t want to be abandoned. We lived an average, middle-class life, and we didn’t really have much to genuinely worry about. Regardless, the constant complaining, bickering, arguing, and childishness of an unhappy marriage was, at least to me, toxic and disorienting. I’m in my late 40s, and that early instilled coping/survival mechanism is a handicap I am still working to overcome, innerstand, and integrate. I wish I had recognized and broken out of that mindset earlier in life. Regrettably, it would be years and many difficult lessons learned before I’d find ways to come to terms with how small, fearful, and anxious it had made me.

I’ve discovered, much later in life, that every man has to explore, appreciate, integrate, and embody his masculinity through a natural process that involves lived experience, rites of passage, mentorship from other men, and other character-shaping influences. If he doesn’t, he will unintentionally and unknowingly act out the toxicity and frailty of his shadow, or his broken manhood; he will continually stumble and fail, and he will find it difficult to develop any kind of meaningful or long-lasting resilience, self-reliance, or faith in his own abilities. It goes without saying that his close friendships and relationships will also be shallow, fleeting, and meaningless.

I sometimes wish my father had been a stronger man and a better role model for me, but I understand well that he had his own battles, struggles, and demons to overcome. From my perspective, it wasn’t really until after his marriage ended that he would actively pursue his own self-improvement. He was a man of integrity and character, and backed me up many times when I was struggling financially or otherwise, but for the most part, he let me be to figure it out for myself. He had, I would learn years later, decided in his marriage to put up with all manner of childish, ridiculous, abusive, and nonsense behavior from my mother rather than be the self-respecting man my sister and I may have preferred. I can’t fault him for that, really. I can connect the dots now, in retrospect. I would never get to know his life story, but I do know that he was very young when his own father died, so he likely had no point of reference, no reliable father figure, and therefore stumbled casually into his own kind of manhood. And, so it goes for many of us. Unfortunately, broken families and broken patterns of trauma may persist through generations. He had likely sought surrogate fatherly types throughout his life, as I would have to for myself. It’s a game of unconscious rehabilitation, of wound healing, of quiet desperation, and of real human need.

Interestingly, at my father’s funeral, I had the opportunity to talk with a few men he’d worked with at his job — the one place where he’d earn a living for most of his adult life. I learned that he’d been a mentor and father figure to someone he’d worked with for many years. It was great to hear, if not selfishly frustrating. It was good to know the capability was always within him to be and do. That must have been satisfying for him as well, to have young men who relied on his wisdom and experience. Unfortunately, in our somewhat traditional nuclear family, he wasn’t empowered to act on nor express it, and I can only imagine that was extremely difficult for him. There were also cultural barriers that played into the chasm of misunderstandings between our parents and us children.

If it’s true that I chose my parents, it must have been for a reason. I’ve heard many variations of this idea over the years, though I’ve never found direct evidence to prove to me the truth of the matter, one way or another. In the grand scheme, I must have had some influence.

Mantas Hesthaven – Unsplash

What’s It All About?

Distraction comes in many different forms, but the goal is the same: to take your most valuable resources (time (physical aspect) and attention (spiritual aspect)) given to you by the Creator to impact your world and place them anywhere else.

Franklin O’Kanu

I’ve explored the underlying reasons for my life walking the long and winding path. I’ve always wanted to know and innerstand what’s true, and I will always rail against those who make it their purpose to lie about it, dance around it, or present obscured or obfuscated details and facts.

There are profits to be made in fakery, falsity, and pretend. Massive profits. Entire industries built around fiction, fantasy, and maintaining really big damn lies. I can’t be quiet about that, but I have come to realize that I’m not here to fix all these iniquities and imbalances. They are ancient, prolific, and without end.

This uniquely devised reality construct can and will provide any and all means with which to keep us occupied and distracted, fighting within ourselves, and among each other. Furthermore, it can and will provide the evidence necessary to support or defend virtually any point of view, any belief, and any opinion.

  • The earth is provably a globe and provably flat. It’s spinning and hurtling through space at incredible velocities, yet it has been proven scientifically to be stationary.
  • Outer space — based only upon the observance of our veritable, remarkably convincing sky clock, or stellarium — is presented by well-funded space agencies, Hollywood, and academia to be real, to be dangerous, and one of the last frontiers. Yet, no one has traveled beyond our lower earth atmosphere, and certainly not to the moon. Space is not as it has been presented nor described.
  • The moon is said to be a physical rock, or perhaps an ancient space base orbiting the earth, yet evidence shows it to be a hologram, and that it is likely self-illuminating.
  • The sun is the supposed center of our solar system, and the Earth is perfectly located in its proximity. Sure it is. It is a massive ball of burning gases many millions of miles away, yet how it casts its rays of light upon the earth shows it to be a local light source — and it’s conveniently the same size as the moon in our sky, allowing for perfect eclipses to occur. In truth, the sun doesn’t emanate any heat whatsoever, but its various forms of radiation makes it seem so.
  • Some people fall ill when they’re around other ill people, therefore a contagion must exist, even though no one has ever scientifically proven it to be so. There is no such thing as a flu season, nor a common cold. There are natural healing adaptations and detoxification processes. There has never been an actual viral outbreak, epidemic, nor a pandemic. It is all in our minds, and in fabricated, oft-repeated and recycled narratives. They’re all cover stories for something else. Our minds, our emotions, can be weaponized against us to make us ill. But these facts do little to prevent a multi-billion-dollar industry built upon lies and distortions of reality from deceptively promoting their toxic, poisonous, and deadly products and services to an unwitting and mind-controlled public. The human body is intelligent, resilient, and adaptive beyond our general understanding.
  • Governments of the modern world are proven to be the most corrupt, most parasitic, most criminally maligned corporations, yet most people are conditioned to believe that there would be utter disorder, chaos, and anarchy without their “benevolent” existence. Societies are increasingly dependent on their services, benefits, and handouts, yet seemingly oblivious to perpetually increasing taxes, inflation, and debts. We learn about all political scandals, cronyism, lying, misinformation, propaganda, and ongoing fiscal and infrastructural failures, yet when elections come along every 4 or 5 years, the population chooses to forget everything they’ve learned. That’s “democracy” in action.

This is a mere smattering of the voluminous and disorienting nonsense we must contend with in this strange 3D realm. It’s a recipe for madness for those whose aim is to seek the truth. But it’s also a constant reminder that this life should never be taken too seriously. We’re just passing through.

…the forces opposing the essential progress of humanity are always embodiments of the three great enemies: ignorance, superstition, and fear. As man advances in his collective evolution, these negative obstacles supply a necessary incentive for individual improvement toward collective security.

— Manly Hall

I make no claim to fully comprehend the scope or complexity of our human existence, let alone the true purpose of this convoluted, messy, and perplexing Earthly plane. In my opinion, there are too many variables, too many fragmented and conflicting narratives, and too many points of contention. Perhaps this is by design. Regardless of how hard I work to synthesize the actual and factual through ongoing experience, study, and research, determining what is reasonable, real, and true will undoubtedly be a challenge until the end of my days.

Solvitur ambulando