this post was originally written in June 2020

What does it even mean to grow?

In the lingo of personal growth in the West, a shifting perspective on the meaning of growth and life itself seems to define the transformative dark period as restrictive filters give way to the open expanse of a broadened outlook at the other side of a period of disintegration.

I can’t help but imagine the impasse that my own self-narrative has met exists in parallel to the societal one outside my still pandemic restricted window.

Spiritual practices of inquiry and critique that helped me gain confidence and balance when the fundamentals of life otherwise reinforced an upward trajectory and glimmer of hope for myself and the collective have failed. Perhaps there was another side had I just stuck with meditating, stuck with the path I was on, but I don’t think so – having a general goal and orientation helped me push through during tough times throughout the 10-12 months I was able to navigate.

In fact, it’s that sense of telos, of lift, of verticality, in a Sloterdijkian sense, that has propelled me past my struggles in the past. The fuel, the engine of the practicing life. The call, “you must change your life!”

Only some sense of this can supply the energy that is required to overcome conditioning, in my own way, and supply the necessary motivation to break through and mature in the absence of traditional social pressures. Otherwise, I just stare blankly into the void, look away, and then overeate and read the internet, my addictions of choice. The simple joys of immersion and flow in the tasks that present themselves do not possess, within their very acts, the activation energy to push me up and over the threshold and back into a healthier, more balanced general state of being.

I have understood this for the past 6 months of food addiction and varying levels of depression. I have wrestled with coming to this conclusion. I did not want it to be the case. Convinced of the necessity of the complete stance, I wanted to believe, and part of me still does, that this was my dark knight of the soul to deliver me into a more permanent residence within the complete stance. I’m afraid its not. Instead, it’s been a black hole sucking up meaning and leading me deeper into previous, immature states of being with each passing month. It’s been a steady buzz of depression/Bud Lite Nihlism that has provided relief from persistent anxiety and a stability won via a devil’s bargain against much richness of meaning or feeling. My journals and understandings before and now during pointed to the need for a break from the too-early leap to the complete stance in order to move forward and, it turned out, to prevent collapse by listening to the wrong cultural advice. But yet again, I proved too weak to assert my own autonomy and my body will bear the scars of this period of self-inflicted physical and psychic trauma as bodies always do. But I cannot recover if I do not undergo another full reckoning of what went before.

I have spent the last 6 months attempting to achieve liftoff and build momentum in the basic habits that comprise a psychologically functional life via the complete stance and have proven unable to. This is what I take the general thrust has been of my coaching work, an attempt to free me of being stuck in my head and out into the open, flexible, natural, embodied world of being more fully human. I’m not ready yet for this, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be. But I’m now convinced that to get there, it must be by finding a way to buy into systems and crutches with gusto that I might transcend them later, that step can’t be bypassed. I must eat again the forbidden fruit of Eternalism to energize the necessary development in the ‘harsh’ stage 2 and stage 4 realms rather than be weighed down by guilt over defining them as selfish navel-gazing from a stage 3 perspective, as my inner critic has been wont to do. Just as part of me feared even then, as I gave up on this project 6 months ago and decided that I needed to stack greater stage 3-style emotional intelligence on top of the already over-burdened project of stage 2 self-care and stage 4 systemically principled living, my boundaries collapsed and attempting to develop all three personality aspects at once resulted in regression and the development of none at all inside the vortex of depression. Reaching out for stage 3 community amongst family and friends has rung hollow…its principled commitment that’s called for not tribal affiliation. Sure, I still have gaping stage 3 developmental holes that would threaten my very survival in some kind of doomsday collapse of society [1] and devolution to agrarian society, but nonetheless I hae to prioritize.

In my quest to submit to a process of transformation that would help me experience life more viscerally and through off my limited rationality, I took two steps back. The only thing to do now is of course to fulfill the cliche and take three forward. It sucks because in many senses I really, really am in a worse position than I was in December, have clearly been so since late January or so, but haven’t been able- to repeat the metaphor- to acheive liftoff. Unable to resort yet to the ecologically sustainable and enjoyable solar powered biplane of the metamodern complete stance, I must dig into the earth and the darkness, refine the unholy jet fuel of mission and eternalism, and be inspired by exploring the heavens before learning to enjoy more mundane modes of travel.

As David says,

Rushing development into the complete stance can backfire. Apply the antidotes to the confused stances, and the practices for stabilizing the complete stance, only when you feel relatively emotionally secure. [1]

So I’m back to where I thought I would be when 2020 began. Solidifying stage 2 and the ability to know myself, know when I’m in pain, provide myself with basic love, stay in touch with my own interests, shadow work on what I want and need and the like. Concurrently, developing Stage 4 competencies by continuing to work on my identity as a professional and an adult with standards in my personal life. Fueling this all through some eternalist energy to make the struggle worth it while attempting to leave Memento-style reminders that the eventual goal is the complete stance.

Why these two? Continuing to develop stage 4 seems to be key to successfully navigating this chapter of my professional career, though that could be wishful thinking; it could be stage 3 virtual signalling that’s actually most needed as I rely on pure politics rather than substantial contribution to my company’s bottom line to navigate this period. In the distinct possibility that my contributions, while valuable, will not actually make or break my company, this interpretation is at least what will serve my company and I’s growth, even if perhaps making my future there riskier.

So what the fuck do I do now? I’ve managed to re-enchant the world a few times now via conjouring up new forms of eternalism in 2004 (age 16, evangelical Christianity), 2017 (age 30, Jordan Peterson post-Christianity) and 2019 (age 32, Kegan as the secret to Life, the Universe, & Everyting+neo-Shamanism)…the previous two even while firmly grounded in an intellectual understanding of the pitfalls of eternalism. Re-enchanting in the same way twice doesn’t seem to work.

One thing I began to sense late last year was that I sensed myself ready to move on and strike out on my own a bit more in my way of viewing things. I’ve long been hesitant to do this for fear of never making much progress in meditation or any one discipline thanks to classic wavering commitment and uncertainty of those afflicted with Boomeritis who dabble and never make any progress on a path. I have tried, been disciplined for a time, and failed down many a path. I have indeed practiced just long enough to come into contact with deep anxieties and have abandoned my path just when it could have benefitted me, I guess, like a typical fluffly fake spiritual type. I did try. The anxieties persisted for months, the other side never came, no support of a sangha that could get what was going on, excellent coaching support helped but wasn’t enough, and I had a breakdown, relatively speaking, before I could persevere along the path to enlightenment or a more full sober embrace of today’s task or however we’d phrase progress or success. Said breakdown did not result in a breakthrough, but instead, I’ve only excaberated the situation by holding out for a breakthrough and assuming what I was doing before was so wrong and in need of overturning. My instincts back then were correct – practice, yes, commit, yes, but began to hold firm to what I sense my differences are between myself and my influencers/supporters. This difference is helpfully conceptualized as a generational divide between myself and the creators who have most influenced me up to now.

I may be among the sensitive souls simply too weak to face up to the supposed sober truth of our contemporary reality, condemned to repeat eternalistic folly in endless cycles until death or deterioration and having little ‘real’ impact on the trajectory of history even in a small way and instead living out fantasies, but, like a feels-addicted Consensus Buddhist, you know, it feels good, and I just do that for the rest of my life. If that’s the case, I set a firm intention to navigate the volatile cycles of such a life with as much balance and tantric embrace as possible, hoping to catch myself with some humor along the way, between inevitable periods blinded by eternalism’s glory and nihlism’s despair, and make what impact seems called for as best I can.

So all hail the glory of the system! The metanarrative! The essential process! The re-enchantment of the world. It is my only hope in order to conjour the dark energy needed to cross the great chasm that has us in over our heads and deliver me to the Glory of Systems…then, and only then, can I be as flexible and context-based and meta-rational as I’m supposed to be. And lacking that, even if I fall well short of becoming the critical creative type person who can actually contribute to changing the world, I can at least graduate more towards the stage 4 systematic ideal capable of keeping it running. That alone would be an achievement given the overindulged, severely socially underdeveloped failson middle class trajectory I’m currently struggling against and that a close relative has succumbed to. Agreed that Stage 3 conformity doesn’t produce the type of change that will actually move the world forward, but stage 1.5 numbness doesn’t really, either.

In the face of this, conjouring up a new narrative stands as a challenge. Doom and gloom is all around in the culture. The rational boundaries that defined me before have collapsed. The mood is much more in line with practicing soberly.

So the question is again: what exactly to do here? A paradigmatic example is that David’s work is focused on moving folks from stage 4 to 5, although he acknowledges the immense cultural issue in moving people from stage 3 to 4. I can derive some value in his posts, as he hints, by taking a business oriented perspective. However, I seem to have used some major weapons in the Eternalist arsenal that can’t be re-used. Being partially developed in the stage 1-2, 2-3, and 3-4 transitions, each of the previous attempted leaps have profoundly impacted me, but failed to make up for the shortcomings that burned into my character as a spoiled failson from an early age, gaps that were reinforced and began to grow as I entered late elementary school, the same time Robert Johnson identifies as characteristic of western young men’s core wonding events as the transition from childhood to greater responsibility begins to take place in earnest. From those early ages on there was always an acute sense of needing to catch up. And I can reflect back on some who did at each stage – upper elementary, middle school, high school, college managing to shift cliques and/or otherwise close early developmental character gaps in a fresh environment or with a fresh outlook.

As Jordan Peterson points out though, some of these developmental gaps at each stage seem impossible to catch up from at a certain point. Taking inspiration from this, as David once mentioned in a tweet, stage 3 to 4 emphasis of JP’s, and finding in JP’s outlook an eternalist eschatology that revived and restored a lost reverence for my childhood faith, I was swept up into momentum towards stage 4. I recognized the deep flaws I had at 30, but with a relationship and career as stable bases to work off of, I earnestly explored socially in a new area with lot’s of new people and places to discover. I welcomed responsibility, discipline, and started believing I could finally confront physical fighting and interpersonal immaturity. For the first time since college I could truly believe that I had caught a rare bit of personal magic that could sweep me away to a new level of consciousness and responsibility. If shadow work is a key element of growth, of discovering new hidden parts of ourselves, then the Jungians, Peterson, and David’s description of wrathful yidyams all warn of the risk unleashing such energy can portend. And that’s essentially what happened – going through the archetypal experience of one’s own power without the traditionally forgiving context of one’s teens, I acted out and blew up my long-term relationship and career prospects.

I still felt a great amount of energy and sense of personal destiny, however, and enjoyed exploring that after the tumultuous events of late 2017. This slowly began to disintegrate though, as the collapse of the relationship and professional base that I had wandered out from, along with the shame I felt, ate away over the next 9 months or so at the confident, libidinous energy that I’d built up over a period of years prior. My world gradually began to close down.

Within that closing down, a new eteneralism, a new ideal to strive for, began to emerge, one focused on boundaries and honoring who I am, seeing myself as a sensitive shaman out of touch with the complexities of woke culture or small town life either way, but with a unique trajectory to work towards. Instead of focusing on building community, socializing, fighting, and eventually, dating as I did in 2017’s eternalism, 2019 was centered around a retreat inward: structured, grounded social situations, choosing a select group of friends, setting new boundaries at work, meditating, fasting, eating well, and acknowledging and working around what I perceived as my limitations instead of hoping to transcend them with a new mindset. Whereas 2017 I perceived myself as breaking through into a new extroverted, tough, and engaged way of being, 2019’s vision saw me breaking through into a new grounded, attuned, and wise state of being.

This 2019 vision actually had much to recommend to it – I was highly susceptible to the emotionality of groups and losing myself in them, had not yet managed to set great boundaries at work, and desired to live up to the principles I strove for on a more consistent basis. The stage 3 development that I had re-initiated in 2017 was now counter-balanced with an awareness of how easy it was to lose my principles in the warm bath of emotions and such, and I did good work asserting boundaries. Naturally, much of this resulted in less socializing in general, as in a desire to take advantage of long-diminished socializing opportunities, I had been looking to make friends fast and frequently previously.

This inward march went a bit too far. Cut off from the mutually supportive relationships with others, I found myself unable to recover as I struggled to adapt to a new job and was coached to let go of much of the systematicity and rigidity I’d worked so hard to put in place in my psyche as a bulwark against my lazy and listless character tendencies.

A new sober connection with nature was very real and all, but as I let go of the habits to take care of myself and despaired at the lack of stage 3 social skills that I already knew I was saddled with, I struggled to find a story to cling onto to arrest the shame spiral.

This live journal of sorts is a continuing effort to find one. Six months on. I still have the opportunity to pursue friendships, in some way. I have much that I could do at work. I have tried and faield to return to discipline several times. So, being a person who relies on motivation, and is not one of the trustworthy, disciplined types that can simply keep doing the work even when the work is (temporarily, the hope) meaningless, and having failed to transform into one of those unreliant on motivation types, I now emerge.

What comes next? More stories have been demolished. Proposed stories to take on didn’t work. I acknowledge I don’t seem to be able to make the leap to maturity, and must rely on crutches from a certain point of view, perhaps for the rest of my life, never reaching the heights of maturity that seemed possible, what would have been an against-the-odds maturity catchup at age 30 to join the many peers who had likewise ‘caught up’ at previous life epochs, one final chance to alter my lifelong character before it typesets for good by age 35, which now rapidly approaches within a couple years. So many good options that re-enchanted the world have been dis-enchanted. Much that I try to re-inspire is tarred as fantasy, and mired in the current culture level sense of collective decadence and malaise. This is where I’m stuck. To enter the wheel I require a compelling sense of philosophy, of beliefs, from which I can tell a story that engages my emotions and leads to an empowering worldview. I’ve been around the wheel several times but nothing’s stuck.

It’s a combination of living by this philosophy so that I can express my masculine will to do and accomplish, a will that has been crushed by this recent dose of ‘realism’, and integrate it more fully with a feminine self-love and basic care for others, to bring these elements closer to the center of my life from which I can access my spirit warrior and spirit child sides.

The love I feel when I think about Cuddles. That I can be grateful to have known love nad hope to pierce through the veil and continue to cherish my family. To respect that in the others I’ve seen it from like Daniel. To forgive myself. To know where that part of me comes from and to resolve not to give up.

So how to re-introduce lofty boundaries and high purpose while maintaining some core relationships. That is the puzzle. My heart is full this evening, and much of it is having deep work modeled by Wes, and having been heard by Faith. Friendships. Human love. But, of a certain kind. And self-forgiveness. I am grateful for this and intend to navigate tomorrow in a disciplined manner.

““re-enchantment” […] doesn’t undo the “disenchantment” which occurs in the modern period. It re-establishes the non-arbitrary, non-projective character of certain demands on us, which are firmly anchored in our being-in-the-world”.

Demands. A true sense of belonging and connection to the greater good. An acknowledgment that my darkest periods have involved a disconnection to the duties to family, friend, and community. That there is an optimum level of connection to that outside of me. That to connect to myself truly results in connecting to life, and then to others, or else the pattern is not truly serving my greatest needs.

Rather than getting caught in the trap of discipline as a shackle of a painful human life, I can acknowledge it as the gatekeeper of love.

And having abandoned the path of the hermit/shaman, I can hang onto my career, do what I can to restore my physical health and psychological health, and feel that essential duty without which I not only sabotage other beings and life, but ultimately, myself, wherever I fail to maintain the standard of duty.

I still carry much sadness from these twin falls of the past few years. I’m not out of the latest one yet. I am exposed as just as emotionally fragile and in need of validation as the twitter mob-members I so profess to abhor. From this base, may I find self-loving discipline as a path out of the dysfunctional state such despair has led me into. May I find acceptance of what I need, a willingness to find the need, and then a path to mature beyond it, if I can. If I can’t, the grace to live as well as I can each day anyway.

[1] or perhaps at least threaten anything more than a stagnant future if I so much as lost my current job since I have built a career off of two great interviews and good fits with small company cultures – I have no network and little sense of Latourian power as an individual, privileged as I am in being and background.