Hey fellow tears, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we are continuing our discussion onnosticism. Uh in this episode having the start of a conversation on like different features and aspects of it that we happen to find particularly fascinating and interesting and relevant. So that's kind of what we're up to here. We like to do these little series and this is a part of not only our series on like Christianity but our Christianity series is a part of a bigger series called America what the hell where we've been trying to figure out like what's going on in the world and have conversations from our own angle on that. So that's what we're going to be up to again but really focusing on like Gnostic stuff. Um so we'll be talking about different aspects of narcissism um but with the background of these thoughts of an idea and ideas of how it applies to the world around us. Now, but before we get started, if you can do all the things that people ask you, that would be great. The likes or subscribe or share an episode, write a review, all the cool stuff that everyone always asks you to do. It helps us out. As Daniel always says, this is a labor of love and uh uh and we love doing it. So, uh your love and support back would be appreciated. And uh there we go. So, yep. Let me let me let me give a let me give a shout out to to ourselves for for a moment here.

Um

Okay.

Yeah. And and you know people too you know different people listen or watch or whatever but if you've been paying attention if you've been watching what we're watching what we've been doing and what we've been covering. I mean we really have given a lot of background for what's happening now. a lot of the we could say like underlying currents or forces that are currently at play and that absolutely is our intention. It's to you know look at what's happening now and then and then put our you know sort of spirituality you know religesque glasses on and say what are those forces doing to society? What are the through lines that have been here for longer than we probably have been aware of them on one hand and then on the second hand how does that motivate people right? How does that motivate them to act, to not act? And some of the secret language that is coded in everyday conversation that is occurring in both the media and with, you know, people who make decisions and whatnot and how they get um consent from the population. and maybe not just not consent but maybe that they are in an outpouring of people's desire from the teachings that they have been taught and in and you know in previous episodes that would have been uh the protoorthodox Christians which would be very motivated by revelations and so when we see the movement the intense movement towards end times discussions and those leanings then when you have decisions that are made on a global scale. You know, now we're involved in a you know, multinational conflict and you know, you hear the the horror stories and you see the things on TV at well probably not TV at this point. media is kind of trash, but you know, you see it on Instagram or you see it wherever else, you know, Tik Tok or Facebook or whatever, um, YouTube, you I think the compassionate people would wonder how can this occur? How does this happen? How does this happen so often in human history? And when you believe yourself to be part of something larger or guided by a a a hand that is creating the story of the universe, you are justified. You believe yourself to be justified in doing anything anything at all. And that kind of motivation while if used positively can be uh amazing things can happen but if used negative things if used negatively then devastation is absolutely the language of these people because their intentions are to bring destruction. So we have been talking about this in a you know direct and also roundabout way. Uh, and I just wanted to uh highlight the fact that, you know, we're trying to ride the wave before the wave crests. And I think we're we're we're almost there or we're at least we're right with it anyways.

Yeah. I mean, this whole thing is heartbreaking. You and I are both feel it. You know, the suffering of all the people who are caught in the midst of these things.

Yeah. And it's been a little bit, you know, we're doing these episodes on Christianity and it's like a painful subject, right? But like having to look at like, okay, there's a part of this orthodox tradition of Christianity, not everybody, but there's a line of it that's toxic unfortunately, right?

It's uh, you know, we've done episodes on like uh the fascinating psychologist Wilhelm Reich, and he talks about emotional plague. when you get toxicity and this is toxic,

you know, you just make a diagnosis and have to call it and it hurts

to have to talk about these things. But I think part of our goal at least

in this is to um you know uh share ideas around it that have a lot of substance to them, right?

You know, when you were talking I think a lot of people and I it's all good. We all have our own feelings and opinions. A lot of people give kind of like hot takes. I think it's good.

Right. I was thinking we're giving like ancient takes,

right? classic take sometimes that's our thing to be educational, right? But to, you know, see how that connects to what's happening now.

Yeah. And uh Yeah. So that's what that's our attempt y'all. That's what we're trying

That's what we're trying to do.

that's what we are doing. We we're not trying.

Yeah. Not even trying. We are doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Give us ourselves our full credit on it. Yeah.

For sure.

Um there is a context for this. I just wanted to share a little bit. you know, as I was thinking up, you know, my notes for what we're doing with this is, you know, we've been trying to talk about different aspects of like the Christian tradition and it hopefully opens up possibilities of like thinking that there's other options within that tradition that you can find yourself into, right? There's other versions of Jesus, other ways of talking about him that it's out of this toxicity, right? uh but I wanted to share too that you know there's a really deep kind of Buddhist or Buddhist tantric idea about understanding the beliefs and the systems of people around you right because in doing that that becomes a way of understanding others and then to be of more help to others right and that's a pretty deep tradition so you know as I was thinking about what we're up to you talking about that aspect you were talking about Daniel there's another aspect which is deeply rooted in the kind of traditions what we're drawing from where you look at the world around you and the beliefs of the different people around you and you document them and you say, "Okay, these was what these people seem to think." You know,

as an example, when you got people doing this in China, they were going, "Okay, what do Dowists think?" And they would jot that down, you know, to try to capture what they thought the Dowist mindset was to understand people, right? And then understanding is power, right? So this is what a Dowist thinks or this is what a Confucious a Confucian thinks. And it's there's a certain power in being able to do that. And you know, we've been running through these different versions of what different types of Christian people think so that we can understand where all the different people are at within this penip of possibilities within this tradition. But that's how you understand people and that's how you try to be helpful to people too. So I just wanted to point that out at the beginning. It is it's not just our idea. We're we are getting to something that has a deep root to it, right? Millennials old roots.

Okay. Okay. Let's look and see what do people actually think.

That's a psychological thing. It's also like a philosophical spiritual things so you can figure out where people at. And unfortunately, we have to spend time talking about the toxic aspects of Christianity. Um, I wrote this in my notes too and I know you were talking about it already, but you know, we this war started like this is our first episode after this war, right? So, the United States is in a like uh and allies are in a like an incredibly bloody war, right? Um, and as far as like the toxic aspects of Christianity, there's like all of our like a slew of our public figures that are out there taking this attitude of like, yeah, this is a holy war. This is a crusade. We're back to that again. Every the old line from the Godfather, every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. You know, we're back to this [...] [...] again. So, you know, it's painful to say these names, but Lindsey Graham, this is a holy war. I saw him quoted that will determine the next thousand years.

Oh. Oh, wow.

You're like, "Oh,

good. Good thing there's no delusion of grandeur with with that one."

Yep. Mike Johnson, who's our House of Representatives. Some people call him Moses Mike because of his claims of visions.

Mike Johnson

love for men or

that's another part uh like that's another part of Mike's.

He has layers

like Trident.

He has layers. And like it was interesting because he was like we have to stop Islam's misguided religion

back to that holy war one Pete Hexith and the military propaganda about that. I don't know what you thought about that uh you know this stuff Daniel but this whole idea of people talking about like Trump is anointed by Jesus in order to light the signal fire to cause Armageddon and trigger the rapture. Apparently that's going out to the soldiers. And when I was hearing that, I was thought, okay, would Daniel imagine hearing that kind of stuff? Was that anything that was around when you were in the service? Was those kinds of things said?

No.

No,

that was a short answer to the point.

Yeah. No. No. And and you know, I mean, it's been a while.

People who don't know, sorry, but Daniel served in Iraq, right? So, he has experience with this. He knows.

Yeah. when I was in that you know we there was there there definitely is kind of an in club if you are active in the church for sure people hang out with you you have access to higher ranking folks and different people who you could sort of cross if you want to call it party lines but you can cross commission non-commission commission I mean meaning non-commission officers like a sergeant and commission officers like a captain or something like this. Normally, you're not supposed to fratinize, but if you're engaged in the church, you can meet people who you might not normally meet. And that's called networking. And that's good. But, um, the part about that that also is not good is that if you know you're not in that inroup, then maybe you might be left out a little bit for something. So, this is definitely a thing. This is definitely a thing. However, outside of maybe some friendly deals that you might be able to get, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that's part of it, right? You know, it's not about what you know, it's who, right? Um, but when it came time for mission, you didn't need any extra motivation. So when I heard this, I was really kind of confused as to why would anybody anybody who is active duty need further motivation? And so that's why I go back to what I said previously. If you are giving yourself the um I don't even know what's the right way to to to describe it but like the uh the permission of God the guidance of the creator the this sort of like uh inevitable movement in in in forward history that is going to unfold with the help of you. Well, then what would you not do is the is the bigger question. What would you stop yourself from doing or not stop yourself from doing knowing that that is the wind at your sales? The wind at your sales is literally the desire of the creator. That's the sale. That's the that's the pitch. And as a as you know, as somebody who served, who served in wartime, who lost friends, who definitely, you know, saw things, which you know, and I don't mean for people who've never served, it's not, you know, you don't have to if you don't want to. And I'm definitely not here like, you know, waving the yellow flag, you know, saying support the troops. You should support the people who are out there because, you know, their lives are on the line and it's dangerous and whatever. We should also support the civilians who, you know, whatever. And we should honor life, which means acknowledge death and and how how tragic it is for those of us who are still here for we the ones we lose. You know what I'm saying? But the bigger point is that like when you why would you need extra motivation? You're a professional soldier. That's your job. You have signed up. You have given your life. You've already given your life over to the country and say and you've said basically when you sign your name on that paper and you get shipped off and trained, you are saying I trust in the judgment of people who are above me to know where to put me and when to put me there. You're already you've already yielded your will. You've already yielded your body and your life to other people to do what they will. Right? So why is it that you would need extra motivation in particular? The the military is not 100% a Christian organization. So why would you be inciting a Christianic ideology to everybody? It just makes it makes no it makes no sense for me. It it it honestly it breeds weakness. It breeds weakness and underlying ideologies and desires for why it is that we're there and the fact that we have been talking about this now for the last, you know, month, month and a half. And and I know sometimes the audience likes us to move on a little bit, but we could not have been at this point in this episode right now without all the other episodes that we have done previously up until this point. And so I know we sometimes drive the point home pretty poignantly if you know I use that word multiple times. The the reason for which is for right now is for people to understand that these things are not just topics of conversation. This is alive currently and it is absolutely shaping our world in ways that it hasn't in probably a really long time. you know, it's left the the halls of conservative organizations and it is now in the halls of Congress essentially and in the halls of other congresses and other countries and it's alive and a well and it's breathing you know and I don't think it has anything to do with religion at all actually these are you know this is kind of the same belief as in aliens the same same madness Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you're going to look at the world around you and you're going to try to understand that these are the subject matters you have to cover. There's just no way around it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, okay. So, you know, the other part that's coming up in all of this is like this connection back to like the land and this notion of like rebuilding the third temple is like being talked about all the time now, right? Which would just ex make things explode. Um, you know, and uh, you know, our one of our ambassadors, Juan, Mike Huckabe, was talking about, you know, this whole mythology of like what has to happen with the Jewish state and how it has to like expand to this thing to trigger the rapture and all this stuff that's going on. So, as a belief system, educational for all of us, this whole thing, if you've never heard this phrase before, I will uh, lay it out for you all. It's a thing called dispensationalism. It's part of like certain aspects of evangelical Christianity. And I've heard people talk about it, Daniel. I'm sure you have too. You know, you hear that phrase like sometimes if you like pay attention to these circles and what's going on, dispensationalism. Um, and so, you know, the notion behind this is that human beings are going to kind of like push the divine plan forward ultimately, right? by, you know, creating these conditions that are going to trigger the rapture to come. And the dispensational idea is that there's different like dispensations of like the divine or God's relationship to human beings. So again, if it's going to start appearing in the media, and it probably will, we're usually pretty timely on these things, right? We start talking about something and it's going to find its way around. So if you've never heard this before, you know, to give you the clue of what's happening with this and to explore this aspect of what we're calling protoorthodox thought, right? Per like scholars of religion, this subp part of that is the idea that God interacts with humanity in different ways. So quick version of this just so we all can get it because I have you heard this phrase before dispensationalism, Daniel, is that something that's crossed your path? Okay. So, the dispensations come from like readings of the Bible in the idea that there's these stages of the way that God is going to interact with human beings. So, as an example, in the beginning, it's the stage of innocence and it's the Garden of Eden based on these biblical stories until something terrible happens. Eve eats the apple, everything goes to [...] But that's a stage. Then you enter the next stage which is human beings living um within this being tossed out of the garden and kind of living in this protoime until God wipes them out with a flood. And the idea that like there's going to be destruction is like part of this thing. It's these stories of like things being wiped out essentially in a lot of this stuff. Then it continues on and then you start having after the flood the re another dispensation that hovers around human beings and that one ends with the biblical story of the tower of babel where all the people try to build a tower up to the vine and god wipes them out.

And so there's always this part too.

I think yeah

that created uh the the game Jenga Jenga.

Yes, that's correct. We're all like doing mini miniature versions that how hard can we make the tower before God knocks it down because you pulled the wrong piece out.

That's right.

Um and then there's another part to Abraham. I'll do it quick. You know, that's a segment, you know, then there's another part of the story up to Moses and the revelations to Moses and then there's Jesus and Christianity. And then the whole thing is you always know where it's going to go in the end. Drum roll. The rapture. It's always going to go to Revelation. And then there's going to be another destruction and devastation. And it's strange because, you know, part of this dispensationalist idea has to do with like whatever Orthodox Christianity or this kind of evangelical this subset of Christianity thinks about, you know, how the Jewish people fit into this story too. And if you don't know this, there's a whole thing about like what they call the twothird scenario where once the temple is rebuilt and the rapture starts, the Jews are going to get wiped out. So, you know, it would seem like it would be good for a while, but the Christians are not on your side in this. They're waiting for twothirds of you all to get wiped out. So, that's the idea. And then very famously there's this notion of what they call the millennial period. Christ will rule on earth after one kind of line of destruction. He'll rule on earth for a thousand years and you'll get another line of disruption and that's the end of the whole story and creation is over. It's kind of bizarre in the sense too. So that's the that's the millennialism. And I I I had heard of dispensationalism but I had never heard anyone like really define like what's a dispensation? What are they talking about? It's supposed to be these different little periods of time that define how God is relating to the world within this sort of line of thought. So anyways, I wanted to share it. Obviously, on a certain level, all of this has a toxicity within it, right? And in terms of our Gnostic stuff, this is like one of the like alternative versions that is trying to fight against these orthodox ideas. And so, you know, that's within the Christian tradition, too. episode. I mean, I think that's what matters to me that there's this kind of toxic oppressive orthodoxy. As we talked about in previous episodes, too, it's fair to say that those are elements in lots of traditions, not just in this one.

Correct.

But this one is like super active now, y'all. It's in high gear. And you know, there's just no way around that. Now, as when we get to our Gnostic stuff with this, you know, uh Gnostic stuff is trying to like challenge this. And it goes back to something at the root obviously within this whole within this tradition let's say right there was always these different tensions that were always there you know these aspects that were oppressive and toxic and reactionary and then other parts that were trying to be challenging in response. It's been there from the very beginning. So anyways that's the idea. You got more on that Daniel or No,

I wanted to do the expect the the little educational thing on the dispensationalism. I'll bet you that word is going to find its way out now into the sphere. You know, sometimes that happens with our little pod. We start talking about something and we're like right on that cusp of recognizing, okay, this is going to start to appear and you might start seeing that phrase. So, if you're listening, you kind of know what people are talking about, right?

Okay. So like to my mind switching gears on that a little bit um we wanted to talk also about nnosticisms nasticism and different aspects of it and I think the one that occurred to me first Daniel to talk about was to look at the problem of like suffering

in the beginning right of the the whole thing

and talk about what the gnostic attitude is but also compare it to sort of some of the other traditions we've been talking about other ways of thinking other paradigms to figure out what does narcissism have to say about this and how does this like fit into how other people view this. So I don't know like let me throw it back to you. I have always thought that this question of the problem of human suffering is like core right?

I've always thought about this and I'm sure you have too. So I mean you got thoughts about that before we go in and start

in what way? In what way?

I just thought maybe it was some little Buddhist part of me. I was like, I care a lot about the whole problem of human suffering and how does it end? Has that been a thing for you, too? I mean, I've always been kind of thinking about that. It probably was part of the reason why I got interested in Buddhist stuff because one of the ideas of Buddhism is how do you end suffering? Right.

Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think the hope is that suffering itself does something to you. And specifically the suffering of others does something to you. The suffering experience within oneself from one's own life or experience does something to the person because they're going through it. So they're being affected by it and then the the reaction to that experience moves them in one way or the other. Okay. But you're sort of subject to that. It's not like you have a choice. Fine, you have a choice in your reaction, but you might not have a choice in the experience of it happening to you based on where you're born or whatever the case might be. Sometimes the color of your skin or society, anything like this, you know, health-wise. Well, I think the question for me is what does the suffering of others do to you? So when you see suffering in other people does it motivate you in one way or another to do something about it to be a source of assistance to be a place of solace to be a refuge to be an assistant to be uh you know something and in in some ways it can you know you can have a career out of this if you want you know in some way shape or form you can be a paramedic if you want to help people in their greatest time of need when they reach out, right? If you want to keep people safe, you can be a police officer. If you want to, you know, help people to not burn, you know, firefighter, like whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Medical people.

Mhm.

Yeah. Medicine, like there's

motivated by that even personally,

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Exactly. But then on a gr on a on a larger scale, you wonder what the suffering of others does to people who might not be directly related to that suffering. Right? So for people who in this case are pro-intervention, right? Military intervention. Well, if you were to be in proximity to, let's say, someone being partially crushed by a building that fell on them or a ceiling, right? And you have to hear them scream until they die because they're going to bleed I don't know. Does that do anything? Does that make does that not you but does that make that person feel any kind of way or that you know people will be absolutely incinerated by bombs as they go off like incinerate you cannot count their death because there's nothing left of them right does that concept let alone the reality that it happens and it happens frequently does that not do anything to to you or does your ideology uh supersede the peace in you that I would hope reacts to the suffering of others? And if the answer to that question is no, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with that. To me, that's the problem. That's the real problem of suffering in my from from my perspective. I think it's an avoidable illness and things like that, right? You know, life is going to happen. This is going to to to do its thing. But these things are avoidable. And I don't know how to as a spiritual person, as a person without much political power or anything else like this other than voting, if that even counts anymore, who knows, right? Um I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to change this and I don't know how to stoke that fire in other people to say like we might not agree on everything. I don't know exactly what to do with um I don't know tiff money or what to do with uh you know surplus in uh tax revenue. You know I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to manage uh federal funds for disaster relief. I that I don't know I don't know this but I do know that we should be able to agree on the that the suffer the the voluntary suffering of other people on a mass scale that is absolutely and 100% unnecessary. I think we should be able to agree that we should try our best in every single attempt to avoid this at all costs. And yet we find ourselves disagreeing about the most basic things which is and to me this is the most basic thing. And so yeah, that that to me that's the problem that I that's the problem that I see. You're muted. Sorry, lips removing. Nothing coming up. Yeah, I was I I mute sometimes just to let you let uh let the flow go. Um yeah, when I think about this, you know, in the very first day of this war, there was like the bombing of a girl school and you know, um you kind of look at something like that and you can debate like whose munitions fell. It doesn't really matter, does it? because the girls are gone. And you know, I think you know, part of like you we were talking off mic about this uh evocative Buddhist term bodhicitta, which is the desire to spiritually improve yourself to be of benefit to yourself and others ultimately maybe even to achieve something like enlightenment, you know, like if you want to get really deep down the possibilities of this and you want to have faith in maybe even these extreme spiritual accomplishments. But in any case, the idea is that based on love and compassion, you want to go and improve yourself to be a benefit of self and others. Okay, that's bodhicitta, right? And uh you know, part of that is the ability to develop this this purposeful goal of developing compassion and love. Compassion then having a specific idea which is the desire to see other beings saved from harm. Love being the idea of seeing other benefits, other beings thrive and and grow and benefit, right? So the compassion side is more the protective side, the saving from harm. The other side is the more wanting to see other beings benefit. So this is sort of like a Buddhist psychological idea to the the greater extent you can kind of develop in this in yourself, the more powerful your spiritual practice is going to be. And one would think from what you were saying in the context of this that um just being able to use one's imagination in a kind of meditative sense and say what would it be like to like to be a girl who's in that situation, right? All of a sudden your life being cut short in that way or or even if you survive watching your friends being taken away from you or the parent of those it's not a hard leap to be able to do that. It's a small thing of like empathy and compassion to do that and uh you know that is in a certain sense a kind of a meditation then right you meditate on what you were bringing up the suffering of others to like spark that inspiration yourself right so then the question becomes like why doesn't that spark there's even two ways of looking at it wouldn't that be an easy kind of empathy to build and then the other part would be isn't on some level given the theory of like Buddha nature that we all have a ultimately at the core like a good core to who we are right a good spiritual core in every living thing right then you have to ask the question like well why is that obstructed like what is going wrong with that that doesn't allow that to spontaneously and naturally express itself right or allow that self to be triggered by like these little bits of empathy you know that would seem to be enough to trigger it And then what I hear and part of what you're asking is like well why is that not happening? And in terms of what we're talking about the Gnostic thing versus the protoorthodox thing if we want to like just use that as our framework that means there has to be something that is you know like uh I don't know what the right word is brainwashing. There has to be something that's brainwashing you to take you away from what otherwise would be a very natural response. There has to be something that's being done. And then of course that's the critique if you want to get gnostic from the way we're talking about this of like what these toxic spiritualities do to people. They take them away take them away from something that is very easy to trigger just by the tiniest bit of like meditative imagination or take them away from something that should be a natural response at the core anyways. And somehow you're being pulled away from that, you know, by using your phrase teachings, but teachings that are toxic, right? And in some ways maybe potentially even designed to pull people away from what otherwise would be very natural acts of compassion and very natural acts of empathy that might even be even in spiritually intrinsic. So, you know, that's a fascinating question. And now you're in the heart of like this set of questions. This is like a deep [...] set of questions. And we ha, you know, as we are a little podcast, okay, but you know, as human beings, as living things, we have to [...] crack this thing. This nut has to get cracked so we can get ourselves out of this [...] So anyways, there's a plea around that, but like an interpretation, too. And this is, you know, part of the reason why we thought this is important to talk about because you have to be able to explore like what is it that we be pulling people away from this? There's a like again within the more toxic aspects of this, the [...] that we're calling out, there's um parts where they devalue empathy and compassion. This whole idea of like toxic empathy that that that cuts your judgment of others that are not of the same beliefs as you and that's wrong somehow. This is a whole thing within this segment. And if you don't know about it, search it out. It's a part of what people are being taught too that empathy is bad. Compassion is somehow bad. How the [...] do we get here? Right. And that is within a line of teachings that are toxic. Yeah.

In line of teachings and in and in pop culture.

I guess that's true too. It's within the culture at large. I was talking more about like the way it is in like sort of toxic religiosity circles that are starting to dominate what's happening. But I guess you're talking about something else too. What's your what's your Both both you have in in toxic religiosity for sure. There is us and there is the other. The other is they're not us. They're you know at best they're useful tools for us to toss in the fire to keep us warm. At worst they are uh an obstacle to our greatness and must be shredded and dealt with, you know. And then in a in the culture, in the in the pop culture, you have this is the this is this could not represent what you know what people have been calling toxic masculinity to a more clear point, right? It's this idea that the outside world is there for you to take advantage of. That's why it's in existence. And all of your problems are other people's problems. That's what they're doing to you. You're a victim. So unvictimize yourself by by taking advantage and victimizing others. That's that's the that's the path. That's the key. And that's what they're that's what they're teaching. But what that is teaching them is to desensitize yourself to the suffering of others. And it is Eric and and my belief, deep belief actually, that the natural response to something suffering is to to help. I mean, I don't know how many times I've seen something in real life and and people have people's nervous systems are different. So, not everybody reacts the same way, but generally when you see somebody who needs help, right? They're in the grocery store and they have a heart attack or they get hit by a car or there's some kind of tragedy or something like this. I don't recall seeing many people laughing at that person as they're on the ground suffering, going through whatever they're going through. I don't recall seeing many people um take cheap shots on them, you know, punch them while they're down.

You're going to go to the social media aspect of this. I think you're working your way back to that.

No, no, I wasn't even Oh, you weren't. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. No, I'm saying profound, you know, because you can do all that stuff from a distance through those.

That's Yeah. Also that that part is that

anyways I thought I know you like that subject matter is important to you. So I thought

[...] social media so we can go there too, right? It's like but but in but being there in person I have never seen anybody do that. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying I've never seen it. Have you ever seen someone suffering in real life and people be walk by and just like kick them while you know just continue to walk on if the police are called? like you know people gen gener generally want to help other people. Of course when you you know step away in social media then you'll get um people talking [...] I don't think they would talk [...] in person. I really don't. And then when you're even further removed and it's happening on the other side of the world and then now you get people who don't believe the same as you. Well, it's easy to to wave your flag around and say they're not on my team. Go team. you know, let's win. What winning? What are we winning? It's um and I think and Eric, you could certainly fill in a little bit on this. Uh I think the Gnostic view, because this is supposed to be a podcast on narcissism. Um the Gnostic view is that that's the that's the influence of like a false of the false god, the God of the Old Testament, the God of you know, parts of Revelations. this uh spiteful, revenge, revenge driven uh god of desire that wants to be worshiped and then it pervades across our reality through its uh you know they call them archons but like through its its influence to keep us essentially in a state of fighting and suffering because that

that like yeah that gets to like the whole Gnostic aspect. That's I agree. And I you don't even have to make it like the god of any particular thing. If you want to make it the Old Testament, that's what they were arguing against specifically. But let's you come up with any divinity that functions that way.

We invent a new religion tomorrow and we say the religion of our thing is that

it's on our side against everybody else.

Oh, okay. and nobody else counts and it's up for us to run over everybody else as long as we're doing the deeds of this divinity then something has gone dramatically wrong even if we just invented it tomorrow or no matter where you find that something is wrong right and that could be like the bigger gnostic idea right even outside the context of these people who maybe were talking about uh you know uh this particular protoarth Orthodox thing that they were reacting against, you know, that phrase for the traditions that the Nostics were kind of like in conflict with historically, but you, you know, like invent one now, right? Invent another one, right? It'll still be just as toxic, right?

Because it's toxic at the root. And then when we get to the idea of suffering and like maybe we'll do a little of this today and then, you know, we'll have to like, you know, uh, move along and to be continued in future episodes. But you know like what struck me is like in the the Buddhist world or the Buddhist tantric world that we're using kind of as part of our home base but any of the spiritual I think that we're trying to promote via our podcast right um or share let's say not promote is probably even a better word for that right is okay this this problem of suffering is going to be taken very seriously right and then you can see well how do different mindsets try to address this problem of suffering and if we're going to like which seems to be our vibe of the day because we're both up in arms about this. If we're going to talk about toxic certain kinds of toxic orthodoxies, right? You know, part of what happens within that too is this idea that the reason they're suffering and we'll get back to like the tandric and Buddhist ideas around this. You know, how do you solve suffering if you get out to more of those ways of thinking? But if we're going to talk about the thing that I think we're both we're both feisty on today. This is a feisty episode. But you know when you when you look at it like that understanding is there's a divinity and that divinity is there to punish you.

So punishment is like where the suffering comes. The divinity is kind by its nature, but you [...] up

and now it's gonna punish you.

What else is new?

And that's where the suffering comes from. And even the notion of like you've got a divinity. It's given you free will so that you can transgress and it can punish you and then that's where the suffering is. And then the punishments can get more and more violent, right? Depending on how far you want to push this. So that's kind of like when you think of like where does suffering come from? If you really take it as like a philosophical spiritual point and you get serious about it and you try to trace it through different ways of construing this question, you know, that's kind of the thing. Or you get the other part which is the idea that the divinity works in mysterious ways and therefore it's just punish punishing you or they're suffering for some reason that you don't understand but you know somehow it must be for the good ultimately in some way up the road or something right

like I think these are the two answers that you get within the pro protoorthodox point of view I've talked a little bit about like one of my favorite scholars on these questions new testament scholar and like you know scholar of a religion in ancient religion overall Bart Airman and like this actually was interesting because it was this set of questions that drove him out of religion overall in the end because he didn't know how to reconcile this you know in a way he couldn't figure out like if there was this all good all powerful being why would there be all this suffering and the explanation is well you did stuff that was wrong so this divinity has to punish you didn't seem compelling to him anymore I suppose Right? And how he talks about it. And then the other common explanation for suffering and you know you can make it this what you will. There people this is the belief system. Right? If you just take a step back and you try to be the objective Buddhist tantric scholar, you're going to say, "Yeah, that's one line of explaining it. People have done things that are wrong. Therefore, they have to be punished." Right? That might be even people who don't hold the same beliefs as you. They're obviously wrong in their beliefs. They have to be punished. Right? And then you go further and then you can just say it's mysterious ways. And I think that's what you got. But do you see anything else within that? Those are the two dominant ones I think that you have. But if you have another one, Daniel, I'd be curious. It's amazing to me that human beings often refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. We attribute all of this death and destruction to a greater power. And yet we refuse absolutely to say maybe this is our choice. Maybe we want this. Maybe this is what our desire is. And we attribute it to something else to you know to scapegoat it. Like we say, "Oh, yeah. This is quote unquote God's will." Well, that means you have none. I'm doing God's will. Oh, really? Is that so? H What's funny, I didn't hear him say that. So, who's crazy? You or me? The person who said they heard a voice or the one who didn't? I don't know. You know, the the the lack of like ownership of your own choices. Why? fear of the consequences in my opinion,

fear of being viewed as a monster. Because if if they didn't have a book that said that all this [...] was going to happen and someone just said, "This is what's this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it." Because once this happens and this thing happens, then twothirds of these people die because they don't believe in the same God that we do. That's cool, right? We can't wait for that to happen. That's awesome, you know? and they're going to go to hell. That's great, right? You'd be like, "What the [...] What are you talking about?" Like, are you drinking [...] Drano? Like, I don't understand. Give me a little bit. I want to try it, but like, you know, but because it's like, you know, the will of of a of Oh, it's too mysterious. We couldn't even bother. We couldn't even possibly comprehend. So, let me go murder uh thousands of people. I'll be back real quick to talk about uh how good God is in a minute here, but I'll be right back. This doesn't even make sense. This doesn't even make sense.

It gets to something kind of fascinating, and I I like what you're doing with that, too. I do think it fits in the context of like what we're talking to. What you're putting then is like putting the locus of responsibility back into the individual actors. And that's a spiritual statement. Then the spiritual statement is like you have to look in the mirror and critically think about yourself, your actions and what they mean. And then like this is a big thing obviously in tantric Buddhism too. You can't like and this has come up in different episodes around this too. You can't just like turn off the thinking cells as you've said in different episodes and now okay I'm just going totally on some kind of abstract faith. I don't even know what the [...] it means but I'm following that. Right. what you're I think what what I hear and what you're saying that's like I think speaks to me is like okay let's put the locus of responsibility back in the individual actor who now has to have spiritual responsibility for what they're acting in

right

and uh yeah and that's that's a profound move let's not keep justifying whatever these things are by yeah giving up our individual aspect of spiritual responsibility or individual aspect of like thinking critically. Again, you know, back to the theme of our deal, we do this little spirituality podcast. There's a really famous kind of Buddhist thing. Don't believe something just cuz I told you. Test it. Test it like as if you were trading me for gold and you wanted to see if my gold was real. You wouldn't just do it for nothing. You'd test it and be critically thinking about it.

So, that moves that responsibility back, right? But you have to then have like a

a personal responsibility around that. I like it. It's good.

Right.

okay. Well, the the Gnostic version of this and maybe we'll look at like the other major thing. I was kind of going through as I was prepping the my notes for myself and I was thinking, well, how do people think about this aspect of suffering? Right? Philosophically, this is called the problem. If it's you're talking about divinity, the problem of theodysy, you know, if God is all good and all powerful, why is this such a [...] show? You got to figure it out.

The protoorthodox thing is it's like this because this divinity is either pissed off at us or doing something mysterious that we don't understand, right? And you know, we can't critically think about that. As we've talked about, well, I I guess we could like I guess we pause it, right? You want to like leave it here or should we go I got another five maybe. What do you think?

Let's do five. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, you know. Okay. Let me give the other major one that's like common in the culture and then maybe we'll do the gnostic one. So,

I wanted to contrast this a little bit with like scientific materialism because I was thinking about this different interpretations of like like what's going wrong.

If you're a scientific materialist person, the weird thing about that and we can debate this from a spiritual point of view is that there is no problem per se, right? There are just lots of problems. There's not some over there's not some deeper mystery of why they're suffering some deeper philosophical or spiritual thing to crack. There's just okay, you know, the universe is sort of statistical and random and chaotic with no particular underlying meaning or order. So to the extent that they're suffering in pain or what the Buddhists would call dooka, the problem of like pain, suffering, unsatisfaction, well, [...] goes up and down. It's kind of a random world. And so, you know, that's that reaction. Now, I think we have to have that in contrast with like other things, but that's sort of that that's a dominant kind of thing within our worldview, too. And so, I think it's just worthwhile explaining that. I don't think Eric I don't even think it's in contrast to be totally honest.

Well, that's interesting. Okay. Yeah.

The reason being is that like let's just say, okay, that you are, you know, deciding to invade another country and murder lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people. And you're saying this is the will of the creator. I am merely a vessel for his hand. Okay. But then people might your your detractors, who knows how few of them there are, but your detractors would say, "But what about all those innocent lives?" And then you may use the argument of that's what happens. That's which it which in and of itself is based on randomness.

So that that's how the universe works. I don't know what am I going to say. Do you know what I mean? Like like the the the forward momentum of what it is that I am doing. So like God's will is moving me. It's my it's his intent is moving me to do these terrible things. And then what comes of those terrible things? Well, that's just you were born in the wrong place. What can I say? You're just, you know, you're part of this thing. So I actually don't think that those two things are in contrast at all. I think that they're part and parcel of the same the same kernel.

I think this is a genius move to end an episode on building to a powerful conclusion in a G&T way because in the way I I agree, you know, I hear what you're saying and either case you can end up with the situation of saying um well either way it's random and chaotic and [...] up and that's just how it is. you know, whether it's the will of the some creator that I can't understand that wants this to happen or, you know, is empowering me to do these things, I guess, or whether it's just a bunch of random [...] happens and well, that's too bad that that happened to those people, but whatever. There still is that underlying thing of like randomness that went through. I'm reminded of like um I had put these existential philosophers in here for a reason you know building to our big conclusion

and there's uh John Paulsart famous philosopher right existential philosopher and he said you know what's interesting about this is that you had this sort of what we'll call protoorthodox religious worldview right

and at a certain point you got another people who developed another worldview and they were really the same

and the fun situation you just took out the god and then you put in like random acts of you know uh materialistic nature but either way you got to the same spot right all of it stayed kind of the same and that's what popped in my mind when you were saying that right

there's a way in which like

what happened to people I guess you'd say psychosspiritually is you had the one thing where we're were under the control of a capriccious kind of odd divinity that's tossing us around. Okay, cool. We'll take that away. We're under the control of a capriccious odd rando universe that's tossing our [...] around. And either way, we got to the same place. That was sort of his point, right? And maybe that's a great way to end an episode because I think you're right. I think, you know, if you want to get really deep, I suppose to my mind psychosspiritually, there's something if you want to be a psychosspiritual person, we do. anyone who would be listening to this, I assume they want to do the same, right? There's something off about both of those mindsets, right? And part of it is they come off of the same tree, even like what you're talking about. So, I like it. I think that's that's a like a that's like you watch all of Pulp Fiction, some movie, and you get to the end and it ends satisfying. I'm satisfied with that, you know. And I suppose if you want to like talk from I don't know we're feisty this episode but if you want to talk from the sort of spiritual things that we're trying to share right the traditions that we're trying to share and it doesn't have to be just with this tantra it could be any of the ones that let's say have a kinder heart right any of these like you have to snap out of all of this stuff you know

all right that seems good I'm satisfied with that as an ending thanks

I like it came together in a nice Right.

Yeah, for sure. Uh audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Eric, thanks for, you know, being a co-pilot on this uh on this crazy ship. Uh if you've made it to this point in the episode, thank you so much. Your attention span is is that of a very small percentage of people in the world who can keep their attention for this long because uh the way that things are going, the videos on TikTok are going to just be one and a half seconds. Just going to be somebody screaming and that's going to be it. That'll be that's all that they'll be. you know, just the second and a half fart song and then a sound and it'll end and that'll be it.

Yeah. That that'll be it, right? Um, but we do appreciate everybody uh tuning in and listening or watching or however you're consuming our content. Uh, please feel free to leave a like or uh video, you know, a comment on the video or hit that hype button. Subscribe, send us an email uh at uh the Jyn and Tantra podcast um atgmail.com or on or jyn and tantragmail.com. The Jyn and Tantra podcast on Instagram or if you know one of us, you know, send us a text message. We love to talk about this [...] just in real life. I mean, these are this is these are conversations that we're having with each other, that we're having with our friends and loved ones and maybe even enemies um about this stuff in general and we bring it here and and we share with everybody else in hopes that uh they feel like other people are having these kinds of conversations because I don't know how many people are, but we are and we're certainly grateful for have uh having everybody who's been uh you know, tuning in whether today is your first or your uh you know 300th episode. Uh, we appreciate it. So, uh, as Eric said earlier, this is a labor of love. So, thanks everybody for tuning in. Eric, much gracias. Audience, we'll catch you in the next one. Peace.