[According to their own description, what is the Conspirituality podcast:
“A weekly study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism. At best, the conspirituality movement attacks public health efforts in times of crisis. At worst, it fronts and recruits for the fever-dream of QAnon. As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia. Conspirituality Podcast attempts to bring understanding to this landscape. A journalist, a cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic discuss the stories, cognitive dissonances, and cultic dynamics tearing through the yoga, wellness, and new spirituality worlds. Mainstream outlets have noticed the problem. We crowd-source, research, analyze, and dream answers to it.”] https://conspirituality.net
Preface
The following attempt at an epic poem comes in response to the mentally shattering experiences I had while listening to the Conspiritualiy podcast, explained above. Though I am now several episodes into my re-acquaintance with this excellent podcast (which started but was abandoned right after 1-6-21), the shaking shock first occurred with episode #86: “Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q.”
This callout & takedown on Charles Eisenstein was so needed & done with clarity & compassion.
Eisenstein seems to have some ideas adjacent to thought that I had previously found helpful, such as Zerzan, Sahlins, Daniel Quinn, Graeber, etc, but it is actually something else entirely. Heck, we all like good origin stories.
Just as I have seen Russell Brand completely derailed in the last couple years, as the podcast shows, Eisenstein has fallen into the Q-friendly anti-vax bromance of the too white influencer world.
Friends, just because we sometimes feel the grumbles of spirit deep within, just because our intuition sometimes feels like a direct line to the divine, let's all always be willing to take a deep breath, to take a step back, to vet our visions with fellow travelers of good conscience. There is no magic pill!
Now as I write, I am listening to podcaster Matthew Remski deconstruct a white slam poet, & I feel a little too seen, perhaps a little bit shamed, but I want to confess this before I confess more, I have been writing poetry stuff like that for 30 years. But I certainly don’t share the Instagram-influencer, well-funded, self-help vibe of the person that Remski exposes.
Since we are all vulnerable, broken, in need of sustenance at this interval of pandemic fatigue & social unrest, I certainly understand the underlying cravings that prompt people to seek these curated “peak experiences,” pricey they might be. Why not let them do their thing, like you with your books, records, & unquenchable live music habit?
Beneath it all, I see something vapid & probably worse, the platforming of people who appear to expect their spiritual bypassing to protect them from Covid. The insidious intersection of this drift --from the apparently harmless hobbies of the hot-rich-professionals to something sickening & harmful in its oblivious proximity to the far-right conspiracy crowd.
I know I need to develop & maintain a personal spiritual practice, communal connections with friends & comrades, & a direct tap to whatever source offers compassion, engaged activism but also detachment, radical empathy, & unconditional love.
It’s been more than 18 months since I left a job as a rural Presbyterian pastor. Deconstructing from Christianity has been difficult enough, but now I realize that I never properly deconstructed from two decades of neopaganism & new age stuff that immediately preceded my reconversion to Christianity some 13 years ago. Perhaps it’s my jam to move from spiritual bypassing to spiritual bypassing.
“Trust your feelings” - Obi Wan Kenobi
you are sitting in morning meditation
grateful for the time to breathe but
fully present to the stinking thinking
constant thoughts that chase
your mindfulness deep into the
nagging annoying unhealthy parts
of your mind
you are lost in the
presence of the
ever present one
to keep look look looking
for what you will never find
you remember the long car ride
where you could not pay attention
you could not get out
you had to listen to what seemed
like days but was probably only
hours or minutes of a lilting lecture
about an advanced race of human-like
extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki
from Nibiru who are the missing link
to humanity & our true evolution
but this didn’t end with the long car ride
you remember being handed books
blogs videos & more by one of the
world’s leading proponents of a
global counter-cultural movement
that combines New World Order conspiracy
the truther movement & anti-globalization
with an extraterrestrial conspiracy subculture
you remember the marijuana-induced
freakouts about the light beings that
lived outside your realm or the real
you recall the deep long listens to
TOOL albums or Bill Hicks standups or
late sleepless nights listening
to DIY DVDs you had ordered about
the supposed real story behind 9-11
you even published your own
pro-conspiracy rants in a
legitimate publication & if you are
completely honest you are still very
concerned about the deaths
of Martin Luther King
Thomas Merton
Paul Wellstone to
name just a few
admit it
you have tarried in every variety
of treehugger apocalyptic
accelerationist catastrophist
green pessimism that you could find
you don’t like modern medicine
you gobble garlic & honey
whenever you have a cold
you were anti-vax until this virus
what else do I need to confess
you remember that time
more than twenty years ago
the student complained that
you might be a gay lush witch
the letters that were written to the dean
the wording so desperate
the tone so mean
how many doors or portals were
passed through just looking for the real you
from cradle Christian to eclectic pagan
drifting down the theological cafeteria line
a plate heaping with delicacies that
were once only accessible to royals
yet the alienation & anxiety & addiction
that fueled ever-yet more intense searches
or purges or puck-like urges something
deep down in your bones lacked
sufficient purchase to keep you on one path
how many days or years did you stay
you have always had a hard time with math
how many times
were you sure
that you saw
god when really
that was just the moment
when the drugs finally kicked in
you put your hands in some soil
declared that you were home
even moved into a dome
built by an old man named Owl
but the 13 years there proved for you
something finally unsatisfying or foul
when the contract was signed
a tenant was evicted which
you rationalized mainly because
you learned they were shitting
in the creek you were not the meek
to inherit this parcel of earth you
just had the downpayment asked
never explained to the seller
a local farmer who had been there
for years what all your dreams
were of decadent festivals on the back 40
when the techno sounds allegedly
carried to the next town over
every time you tried to park too
many cars on this tight gravel road
named after pumpkins not solar toads
you bought land from somebody
who bought land from somebody
who bought land back then
when they just took the land
had slaves work the land
it just wasn’t that long ago &
you know what you know
every book you read about
why the hippies failed was
only part of the story because
some of those hippies were still there
yet within yourself you turned
a blind eye to the rural gentrification
that hip white people with bank
& gas in the tank can come take
it’s optional if they even give thanks
a fine line between sustainability
or trashing the land a fine line
between permaculture & a
permanent outpost for
another version of white culture
don’t pretend it is not true
as you watch the vulture feast on
the remains of a mantra that
you borrowed from the east
you are not descended from ascended masters
you are not a shaman or a priest
you are not part of anything
but a broken lineage
of screaming protest
on the counterculture sidelines
of what used to be the
antiauthoritarian left &
yet lest we forget
from a disillusioned
modernist
middle class
point of view
you are nothing but
poet bum or rubber tramp with
a mortgage & a pension
& a Subaru covered in stickers
so you can stand out in any
traffic jam or parking lot
let me make a list of my
own limits & imperfections
the hyper-privileged online
self-appointed prophets
are talking about
cages for the unvaccinated
& government conspiracies
& you cannot help but wonder
if he ever worried about the
government cages that
already exist for the poor
the black & brown
the unemployed & the addicted
or about the military industrial
war machine
the out of control copaganda
always already aimed at
communities of color
they are not really
preaching bodily autonomy
about a poke when they constantly
make an insult out of the word woke
they ran from yoga class to fitness class
to get your meal prep package off the porch
the first world cliches of every meme or joke
they are not autonomous just white
just a new age automaton of bodies
preaching narcissism from the digital
glorification of blonde & toned & beach-ready
boutique experiences for the spiritually alone
who must travel to Mexico or other exotic
locations they learned about on Instagram
while staring into the abyss of their iPhones
you were almost them
admit it
confess it
say it
own it
before your sobriety or conversion you
were drunk on climate catastrophe insanities
dropout escapist post-utopian fantasies
these peak experiences of
fire festival fever dreams
tripping them dipping
then into exotic visions in
a capsule or some fungus
then the angels
climbed out of your anus or your navel to
spin you back
into that magical caravan tent
where you were some kind of
magical imaginary king
no just take me to the shop
where I can buy
some more imported hippy bling
all the feathers & facepaint & feeling your
feelings when the medicine will do
what the medicine will do
but no amount of psilocybin MDMA LSD
the medicine is not you
that was just a cloud not the face
of an old testament prophet in a cloud
remember what they keep teaching you
in those darn twelve step classes
you are not your thoughts
you are not your feelings
it takes a special kind of private
perfect privilege to constantly promote
every minor epiphany to the level
of substack scripture for your subscription base
because you have convinced them
that you are part of the anointed
carefully called & chosen truth-tellers
when you are just as imperfect as anyone else
crawling around for joy
pebbles on the ground
of a cave
just grateful to be breathing
inside your hairless meat costume
of accidental consciousness on this
blue green ball of great mysteries
to be clear
these people are driving me crazy
because like them
I have too much free time
I too have been drunk on
every passing spiritual fashion
of woo woo
doo doo
on my shoe shoe
to share with
you & my crew phew
to be clear now eww
if I had not had the Conspirituality podcast hosts
to do a close deconstructive reading of
the latest Eisenstein animated video
I too might have been swept away again
shared it favorably on my page
& then what or
what then
because you see
like many millions of others
I watched the video for the Coronation
in the spring of 2020 when my intuition tweaked
my feelings were felt like oceans of mountains
of volcanoes of hurricanes of feelings everything
off the charts my dreams & sleep like downloads
from god the whole thing was real for sure
this was earth’s moment
to wake up
to shut up
to shut down
all the shit
that is killing us &
yet within a few months
find us finally living in
the long-awaited
carbon-neutral
fair-trade
free-world
without child-slavery
or sex-trafficking
or anything else the highly selective moral compass
of hip white bloggers have deemed really bad this week
why did I order all of his books that day &
from an independent store even
& not Amazon either
had to wait more than a week for them to arrive
started to read them
never finished them
now listening
to this podcast almost two years later
I am so glad
I never read them
now I just moved them to
the box to take to the used bookstore
because damn this is just some diluted John Zerzan
some warmed up leftovers from Hakim Bey
perhaps a sprinkle of David Graeber but only if
David Graeber were merely just a smarter version of Joe Rogan
& spiced generously with a word you stole from Thich Nhat Hanh
may he rest in peace & power
I am sorry I bought your books Charles Eisenstein but
I am not sorry I listened to Conspirituality the other day
now back to 2020 please
keep this clear because
of the murders of
Ahmaud Arbery
Breonna Taylor
& George Floyd
something snapped
this pandemic thread
in my sabbath head
that it was really only
just about the climate
just about
you know the wildfires
extreme ice storms
the rising polluted sea waters
& not about the police the cops
who are militarized to the nines
an occupying army for the rich
& not about the poison of the
prisons in Mississippi where
the inmates might accidentally
eat a rat that got cooked
in the cornbread that day
there are more choices between
climat-denier & covid-denier
there are more choices
you can still be a nonviolent anarchist
& not be coerced by some Twitter troll
to apologize for voting for Democrats
to defeat Trump & his citizens army
of red hats like brown shirts with blue flags
declaring fealty to a family name
even though in your regional municipality
he is far from defeated but holding
almost every
county city or state
government hostage all set
to giving more civil rights
to unborn zygotes than
to women
immigrants
blacks
or queers
if this is our zeitgeist it is actually
much worse than my worst fears
so there is not a manual on
how to follow empathy or solidarity
or compassion or clarity
or courage into the daily drama
the beautiful but broken barrage
especially when without church or cadre
you do not have a coherent entourage
with whom to climb the barricades
so you are constantly blogging
tweeting posting praying playing
now whether I am consulting
Situationists or Surrealists or Socrates
Buddha or Bonhoeffer or Boxcar Bertha
Jesus Christ or Jack Kerouac or James Cone
we need a forever discerning eye
of fellow travelers & friends
with ears to the ground with a forward
glance to see past the bend in
this winding dangerous switchback road
that surely looks like our collective end
P.S.
you bounce from spiritual bypassing
to spiritual bypassing
guru generalists who are really
narcissists don’t care
they just take the dare
to steal from whatever source is there
that makes them feel of course
to be fair
there is no perfect perpetuity
not even that elusive imperfect perfection
not prepackaged poetic tradition
not a thing to calm intrinsic sedition
just because we have made a
temporary pact with the social
refusing to push it all off the cliff
refusal to murder neighbors in
the light of day
does not necessarily mean we
have somehow made peace
with the managers with the
planners who themselves don’t
have a plan except their
escape pods
all these temporary nods to a
noble egalitarianism are not to
be taken seriously until
the hostages have been freed
yet some goodness or gratitude
are the total sum of these vast
spiritual travels & incessant dabbling
just don’t claim authenticity that
is not mine or a rigid doctrine
not validated by love or reality
Video:
Preface -
https://youtu.be/iURbDHXTQ44
Poem -
https://youtu.be/VhWwC4XCio0