Witnessing two elderly relatives pass away in 2024 has really put me in touch with my mortality.
Although I am on social media, I have been trying to prioritize real life interactions over online ones. That said, I do intend to participate in one of the monthly meetings at some point.
I'm still an agnostic (perhaps my pineal gland has been calcified by fluoridated water), and I wonder how much of the conversation revolves around religion and how I may or may not relate to that.
Re the Group Chats, sounds interesting but i've too much real world stuff on my plate & not enough residual mental energy to devote to something like that.
Re the subscriber count, i have considered ducking out for a few months recently. In all honesty, and this is no doubt a subjective thing, i have found the guest quality somewhat lacking in recent months, and as a result my attention has waned.
This may well go against your principles, but maybe guests who are authors, or similar, thus at least have a solid field to build the conversation around, might be worth considering.
I've found some to be somewhat navel gazing of late, which i do understand is to be expected given the subject matter, but it can all get a bit too abstract and vague beyond a certain point, at least for my personal tastes.
I suppose the counter to this, is that 'it sounds like you want a bit more conspiritainment', which perhaps is not entirely inaccurate.
As i say, this is all entirely subjective, and may not reflect the wider group, but that's my feedback fwiw.
I have not expressed any interest in the on-line meetings not because I am not interested in talking to you and your followers, because I am, but for personal reasons.
These amount to being alone in my household in my thoughts on what is going on and what to do about it, so joining in online chats would cause difficulties for me. Plus, my technical capabilities are limited so I am not sure I could actually hear and be heard!
I haven’t fully read this post yet so this message may be out of context- but wanted to mention, as I’ve read your comments on the low numbers participating in the group chats - that in principle I would like to eventually join in when time permits .
As a wage slave - in a trade and a single bloke I don’t get much time and am usually tired at the close of day & worry that I have nothing of note to say!
I have a lot to learn.
Any way keep up the good work I appreciate the message in CoJ.
Thank you for this gift. Happy with the war scars and treasure bounty from this 1% club ;) - hope others hear the sailors call, the winds whisper, the waves summoning souls… great art accompanying this post as well. Thank you and mahalo (as mahalo carries a deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation of interconnection)
Great post. Loved seeing the participants reflections. Much food for thought and motivation to experience these kind of group dynamics. The insights here speak to the quality of individual, as opposed to quantity, currently entering the orbit...
Hi Jasun, thanks for the honest read. I myself have become aware recently that l that l have this perception that in spite of all things in the world at large, that male groups have, and do more generally speak to a depth that l just have not found in women spaces or groups. The dynamics just aren't there. The true depths arent there either. This has been the case for a number of years now. Interesting.
Looking at your group, mixed, but to be truthful, l have the usual dividend of
'Want/desire' of a thing vs fear. Usually fear of self. So, as one comment about quotes 'silence' wins.
I do admire the depth charges.
I feel the depths is what the soul, my soul craves the most and struggles to find.
I’d like to attend more meetings but I either am not sober for 72 hrs or just fatigued. The time on a Friday is not the issue. I think the sober rule is very important and would not want to be in that space without it. I have recently been internet fatigued for a few weeks now as well and have un-subbed nearly all patronages. I will no doubt be connecting again in the new year J.
interesting stuff here; and, for that reason, would like to attend at least 1 meeting in the near future if possible (currently not able to access mic/camera for unknown reasons beyond my own stupidity lol). One particular note of concern vis-a-vis this discussion would revolve around the medium being used to 'capture' an audience in the technosphere otherwise referred to as the internet; more specifically, as McLuhan would say back in the day, 'the medium is the message'; and with today's form of systems of communication (i.e., internet; social media; algorithms; cybernetics; etc.) I would posit it's next to impossible for anyone to use said systems sans degrading/distorting the content conveyed by its users, viz. no matter the intention or attention carried along with each and every piece of communication circulating, gyrating and percolating through said systems (of power and control), there is little to no capacity for one to surmount the insidious, malevolent and metastatic nature of the demonic spirit of the container being employed (i.e., internet< DARPA/DoD<demonic spirits). That is all! RGB-Y4 out!!
I don't know if an individual perspective is of any use to you but vis a vis a paid membership, I tend to sign up for a bit to give some money to various people and then move on to someone else just to spread things around. I think I'm still a paid sub mainly because you seem to react to cancellations as if they convey some criticism 😂. So maybe you should keep that up.
I don't know if I would participate in a group chat. I don't remember liking it very much in the olden days when I took part.
Oh, and there's just too much stuff out there. I rather like your "voice". I've been following you for a long time, but if I'm honest, I've no idea what you're on about half the time. This is true of everything. I feel that engaging with any linguistic "content" at all is just a bad habit at this point. I subscribed to some substacks but it's just as overwhelming as Twitter. Infact I call this Twitter with verbal diarrhoea. Because I can't just follow a few people who's essays I like, the system is trying always to push more and more. For the language addict it's just total.overdose all the time.
Allgorithm fatigue; cultivating awareness, discernment and subverting expectations can help. Alot of quality out there - and it's an endangered species.
Even just tapping out, getting some fresh air, reading something printed on paper, reassessing; addiction is foxy and nuanced; the potential fixes can be context dependant and morph over time. Self imposed hard and fast rules can backfire also; transgression guilt for e.g.
this is such an interesting meander, a kind of philip glass or steve reich movement; a patterned fractalarity. something that emphasises the sameness of mundanity with the smallest percussive intrusions of a profundity often missed in the mistiness of self-so sameness that rests and restarts with an identity and identification with that which is also a not the same sameness at the same time as it is and is not verifiably identifiable.
your first beat, the nascent heart beat, sounds to me to be a description of the knock on the door by death — was that the scythe, or the fleshless phalanges to which you are responding on the termite ridden oak? and was that death knocker, the knock-about gadabout, was that the one with a loose lipped smile or not? no, no i think not. that it was — or was not? — the death who walks unhooded in a kind of despair that is to be bestrode and my-ned, not undermine-ed, until the end of days, the end of history, the end of time.
your opening echoed my past, and reopened remembrances, tendrils of mind-memory i once my-ned too, each night before sleep. for me it was the end of days daze of having unfortunately survived enough of the day to come to sleep. to sleep and to dream of rest with the hope that this night's sleep would be my undermine-ing with eyes closed into the shadow from which no traveller returns. aye, that's the rub. and for now, they haven't stayed closed. and yet, are they actually open?
and at the time it was as endless as a wagner opera looking for the good notes to arrive by chance. have they arrived, actually, those valkyrian peals of the smell of death in the morning? and somehow i missed them? they passed me by flying overhead to another sky, my olfactory nerves numbed by the smell of mendacity.
now i find myself not really thinking about either 1 or 2, death or meaning, meaning-death. although i am doing a deep dive and write on meaning as the blind act of embracing schism as if truth can be found there. there in meaning. and that it was with your words, here, that uprose a surprise touchstone to/for me: who am I? (https://youtu.be/hpPYKJAnwUo).
it reminds me of something the one-time alcoholic tommy rosen described as he woke every day filled with his my-ned narrative of being a drunk. he had been told that one day he'd wake up and realise that he forgotten the death-drink narrative. he thought that that was an impossibility as the months became years until one day long after he'd woken he remembered that he'd forgotten his narrative, that he wasn't my-ning it. and even more astounding, that he couldn't remember when the thought had stopped when the narrative he'd been my-ning dropped from him like hairs from his head, flakes from his skin.
life — being alive — had filled his narration-space and the drink as death narrative had lost its gravitas and centrality in life with an endpoint of an effortlessness that had only been begot by the taking of choice as chance to live at a time when only death by drink was imminent.
and i find that this is a good analogy — for me and my my-ned narration now: i wake and move and do not wonder about 'what i am doing with my life' as i wander in the wonder of it. rather, i do my life. do trusting that has de-toured, de-ralied choice away from ego-mind into body-land-life as life does and is done by the birds and insects crawling and flying in and around the flora and fauna. hmmmm. at least that is my imagination-sense of the wonder of it all.
with that, i look forward to the next meeting; i'm down for that from oz — where's the wizard and how to keep his fingers light and off the controls? or the manopti-con, where the trick might be to undo the con, the con-niption fits fit to us like straightjackets in a badly produced houdini movie.
so.... music, oh so pretty, i feel pretty, so pretty and witty and gay! but that would be a side story far west of the best in show. instead, maybe:
Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint (Quartet Version)
all the best with what is changing. everything changes! (does death change its robes and if so, who does the laundry and what is the brand of soap?) with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.
Could a decline in engagement and membership have something to do with a recent post's invitation for people who believe in Jesus as their savior, or as a resolution/embodiment to the ineffable, to remove themselves from the discussion (or not respond/participate, and maybe to unsubscribe?)? That's a rough paraphrase, probably incompletely remembered & interpreted, but you seemed sincere in prefering the Children of Job discourse to continue with an OT or non-Christian (Job without Jesus) POV, and weren't interested in the New Testament Gospel and Jesus as the Living Word perspective?
Wish I could ping back to the particular post & reference, seems like it was within the last 2 months? and Girard was part of the query. Hope I hope I misunderstood you, and I wish you an unironic Merry Christmas either way. Peace out my brother :-)
you def misunderstood & at first I was wondering, "have I really said something about a belief in Jesus being necessary or optimal for participation at this site?!"
it's the cost of being liminal; I am quite sure i have lost subbers for both reasons (ie, too Christian/not Christian enough)
More misunderstanding--I meant the opposite (dammit leviathan 😂).
Wish I had time to find the direct reference & post (had to be within last 3 months). The 'line in the sand' declaration sounded (to me, at the time) like a directive that people who put their faith in Jesus, or who know Jesus as the Logos, need not respond to the query at hand. Seems like there was also a note that you don't consider born again Christian's contributions to the discourse to be (as?) valuable as the contributions of those who are bravely slouching and aiming their ardor toward Mordor.
And with that, I whole-heartedly bless you and pray that the whole Horsley house has a Happy Holiday and a hope-filled New Year.
Witnessing two elderly relatives pass away in 2024 has really put me in touch with my mortality.
Although I am on social media, I have been trying to prioritize real life interactions over online ones. That said, I do intend to participate in one of the monthly meetings at some point.
I'm still an agnostic (perhaps my pineal gland has been calcified by fluoridated water), and I wonder how much of the conversation revolves around religion and how I may or may not relate to that.
Have you heard about this: https://thetelepathytapes.com
not a great deal, really; the next Jobcast, hopefully up tomorrow, will provide a taster of the meetings
Really good stuff here; thx for link as this is exactly the type of info I need in my life at this time. Best!
I haven't listened to the podcast yet but saw positive reviews on twitter, for what it's worth.
Re the Group Chats, sounds interesting but i've too much real world stuff on my plate & not enough residual mental energy to devote to something like that.
Re the subscriber count, i have considered ducking out for a few months recently. In all honesty, and this is no doubt a subjective thing, i have found the guest quality somewhat lacking in recent months, and as a result my attention has waned.
This may well go against your principles, but maybe guests who are authors, or similar, thus at least have a solid field to build the conversation around, might be worth considering.
I've found some to be somewhat navel gazing of late, which i do understand is to be expected given the subject matter, but it can all get a bit too abstract and vague beyond a certain point, at least for my personal tastes.
I suppose the counter to this, is that 'it sounds like you want a bit more conspiritainment', which perhaps is not entirely inaccurate.
As i say, this is all entirely subjective, and may not reflect the wider group, but that's my feedback fwiw.
thanks, I’ll have to factor that in…
I have not expressed any interest in the on-line meetings not because I am not interested in talking to you and your followers, because I am, but for personal reasons.
These amount to being alone in my household in my thoughts on what is going on and what to do about it, so joining in online chats would cause difficulties for me. Plus, my technical capabilities are limited so I am not sure I could actually hear and be heard!
Keep on keeping on though, as I am with you 100%.
you are v welcome under those conditions, tho the technical ones would need solving, obviously; you could attend & just listen, the first time
Thank you.
I haven’t fully read this post yet so this message may be out of context- but wanted to mention, as I’ve read your comments on the low numbers participating in the group chats - that in principle I would like to eventually join in when time permits .
As a wage slave - in a trade and a single bloke I don’t get much time and am usually tired at the close of day & worry that I have nothing of note to say!
I have a lot to learn.
Any way keep up the good work I appreciate the message in CoJ.
Feliz Navidad
This post was FAN FUCKING TASTIC!!!!
Thank you for this gift. Happy with the war scars and treasure bounty from this 1% club ;) - hope others hear the sailors call, the winds whisper, the waves summoning souls… great art accompanying this post as well. Thank you and mahalo (as mahalo carries a deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation of interconnection)
Great post. Loved seeing the participants reflections. Much food for thought and motivation to experience these kind of group dynamics. The insights here speak to the quality of individual, as opposed to quantity, currently entering the orbit...
Hi Jasun, thanks for the honest read. I myself have become aware recently that l that l have this perception that in spite of all things in the world at large, that male groups have, and do more generally speak to a depth that l just have not found in women spaces or groups. The dynamics just aren't there. The true depths arent there either. This has been the case for a number of years now. Interesting.
Looking at your group, mixed, but to be truthful, l have the usual dividend of
'Want/desire' of a thing vs fear. Usually fear of self. So, as one comment about quotes 'silence' wins.
I do admire the depth charges.
I feel the depths is what the soul, my soul craves the most and struggles to find.
Kudos to you men.
I’d like to attend more meetings but I either am not sober for 72 hrs or just fatigued. The time on a Friday is not the issue. I think the sober rule is very important and would not want to be in that space without it. I have recently been internet fatigued for a few weeks now as well and have un-subbed nearly all patronages. I will no doubt be connecting again in the new year J.
interesting stuff here; and, for that reason, would like to attend at least 1 meeting in the near future if possible (currently not able to access mic/camera for unknown reasons beyond my own stupidity lol). One particular note of concern vis-a-vis this discussion would revolve around the medium being used to 'capture' an audience in the technosphere otherwise referred to as the internet; more specifically, as McLuhan would say back in the day, 'the medium is the message'; and with today's form of systems of communication (i.e., internet; social media; algorithms; cybernetics; etc.) I would posit it's next to impossible for anyone to use said systems sans degrading/distorting the content conveyed by its users, viz. no matter the intention or attention carried along with each and every piece of communication circulating, gyrating and percolating through said systems (of power and control), there is little to no capacity for one to surmount the insidious, malevolent and metastatic nature of the demonic spirit of the container being employed (i.e., internet< DARPA/DoD<demonic spirits). That is all! RGB-Y4 out!!
I don't know if an individual perspective is of any use to you but vis a vis a paid membership, I tend to sign up for a bit to give some money to various people and then move on to someone else just to spread things around. I think I'm still a paid sub mainly because you seem to react to cancellations as if they convey some criticism 😂. So maybe you should keep that up.
I don't know if I would participate in a group chat. I don't remember liking it very much in the olden days when I took part.
I'm a committed Marxist.
thx; when did you attend a meeting?I am guessing it must have been a long time ago and been an open to all type meeting.
Oh, and there's just too much stuff out there. I rather like your "voice". I've been following you for a long time, but if I'm honest, I've no idea what you're on about half the time. This is true of everything. I feel that engaging with any linguistic "content" at all is just a bad habit at this point. I subscribed to some substacks but it's just as overwhelming as Twitter. Infact I call this Twitter with verbal diarrhoea. Because I can't just follow a few people who's essays I like, the system is trying always to push more and more. For the language addict it's just total.overdose all the time.
I hope the grid collapses and the internet dies.
Allgorithm fatigue; cultivating awareness, discernment and subverting expectations can help. Alot of quality out there - and it's an endangered species.
It's all just exhausting. Need to quit the drug, really. Or so it seems to me.
Even just tapping out, getting some fresh air, reading something printed on paper, reassessing; addiction is foxy and nuanced; the potential fixes can be context dependant and morph over time. Self imposed hard and fast rules can backfire also; transgression guilt for e.g.
I try to spread things around as well.
hola jasun.
this is such an interesting meander, a kind of philip glass or steve reich movement; a patterned fractalarity. something that emphasises the sameness of mundanity with the smallest percussive intrusions of a profundity often missed in the mistiness of self-so sameness that rests and restarts with an identity and identification with that which is also a not the same sameness at the same time as it is and is not verifiably identifiable.
your first beat, the nascent heart beat, sounds to me to be a description of the knock on the door by death — was that the scythe, or the fleshless phalanges to which you are responding on the termite ridden oak? and was that death knocker, the knock-about gadabout, was that the one with a loose lipped smile or not? no, no i think not. that it was — or was not? — the death who walks unhooded in a kind of despair that is to be bestrode and my-ned, not undermine-ed, until the end of days, the end of history, the end of time.
your opening echoed my past, and reopened remembrances, tendrils of mind-memory i once my-ned too, each night before sleep. for me it was the end of days daze of having unfortunately survived enough of the day to come to sleep. to sleep and to dream of rest with the hope that this night's sleep would be my undermine-ing with eyes closed into the shadow from which no traveller returns. aye, that's the rub. and for now, they haven't stayed closed. and yet, are they actually open?
and at the time it was as endless as a wagner opera looking for the good notes to arrive by chance. have they arrived, actually, those valkyrian peals of the smell of death in the morning? and somehow i missed them? they passed me by flying overhead to another sky, my olfactory nerves numbed by the smell of mendacity.
now i find myself not really thinking about either 1 or 2, death or meaning, meaning-death. although i am doing a deep dive and write on meaning as the blind act of embracing schism as if truth can be found there. there in meaning. and that it was with your words, here, that uprose a surprise touchstone to/for me: who am I? (https://youtu.be/hpPYKJAnwUo).
it reminds me of something the one-time alcoholic tommy rosen described as he woke every day filled with his my-ned narrative of being a drunk. he had been told that one day he'd wake up and realise that he forgotten the death-drink narrative. he thought that that was an impossibility as the months became years until one day long after he'd woken he remembered that he'd forgotten his narrative, that he wasn't my-ning it. and even more astounding, that he couldn't remember when the thought had stopped when the narrative he'd been my-ning dropped from him like hairs from his head, flakes from his skin.
life — being alive — had filled his narration-space and the drink as death narrative had lost its gravitas and centrality in life with an endpoint of an effortlessness that had only been begot by the taking of choice as chance to live at a time when only death by drink was imminent.
and i find that this is a good analogy — for me and my my-ned narration now: i wake and move and do not wonder about 'what i am doing with my life' as i wander in the wonder of it. rather, i do my life. do trusting that has de-toured, de-ralied choice away from ego-mind into body-land-life as life does and is done by the birds and insects crawling and flying in and around the flora and fauna. hmmmm. at least that is my imagination-sense of the wonder of it all.
with that, i look forward to the next meeting; i'm down for that from oz — where's the wizard and how to keep his fingers light and off the controls? or the manopti-con, where the trick might be to undo the con, the con-niption fits fit to us like straightjackets in a badly produced houdini movie.
so.... music, oh so pretty, i feel pretty, so pretty and witty and gay! but that would be a side story far west of the best in show. instead, maybe:
Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint (Quartet Version)
https://youtu.be/9i4wH6wm0xk
or
Steve Reich 2x5
https://youtu.be/BuymniDVHEs
all the best with what is changing. everything changes! (does death change its robes and if so, who does the laundry and what is the brand of soap?) with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.
🙏❤️🧘♂️🙌☯️🙌🧘♂️❤️🙏
Could a decline in engagement and membership have something to do with a recent post's invitation for people who believe in Jesus as their savior, or as a resolution/embodiment to the ineffable, to remove themselves from the discussion (or not respond/participate, and maybe to unsubscribe?)? That's a rough paraphrase, probably incompletely remembered & interpreted, but you seemed sincere in prefering the Children of Job discourse to continue with an OT or non-Christian (Job without Jesus) POV, and weren't interested in the New Testament Gospel and Jesus as the Living Word perspective?
Wish I could ping back to the particular post & reference, seems like it was within the last 2 months? and Girard was part of the query. Hope I hope I misunderstood you, and I wish you an unironic Merry Christmas either way. Peace out my brother :-)
you def misunderstood & at first I was wondering, "have I really said something about a belief in Jesus being necessary or optimal for participation at this site?!"
it's the cost of being liminal; I am quite sure i have lost subbers for both reasons (ie, too Christian/not Christian enough)
More misunderstanding--I meant the opposite (dammit leviathan 😂).
Wish I had time to find the direct reference & post (had to be within last 3 months). The 'line in the sand' declaration sounded (to me, at the time) like a directive that people who put their faith in Jesus, or who know Jesus as the Logos, need not respond to the query at hand. Seems like there was also a note that you don't consider born again Christian's contributions to the discourse to be (as?) valuable as the contributions of those who are bravely slouching and aiming their ardor toward Mordor.
And with that, I whole-heartedly bless you and pray that the whole Horsley house has a Happy Holiday and a hope-filled New Year.
what query? i don’t recognize anything in the above, except the bit about Mordor!
I don’t think I have specifically referenced “born-agains” recently.