There is a tension in the modern conversation around diversity in writing. On one side of the spectrum, there’s the call for more diverse characters in stories—to break the monotony of white, straight, able-bodied, cisgendered protagonists and open the door to the fuller spectrum of human experience. On the other side lies an equally impassioned […]
How gnosis—not belief—is the real spiritual awakening Plato’s Cave and the First Illusion Imagine spending your entire life in a dark cave, staring at shadows cast on a wall. You don’t know the shadows are illusions; they’re your entire reality. This is the image Plato gave us over two thousand years ago in his Allegory
How Spiral Dynamics can reframe your “dark night” as a dawn in disguise You’re not lost. You’re in transit. That crushing existential confusion, the emotional fatigue, the sudden inability to tolerate your job/partner/social feed—what if it isn’t a breakdown? What if it’s a breakthrough? Not in the “you got this, girlboss” way, but in the
I read a lot. It’s one of the ways I try to make sense of this strange, beautiful, and often contradictory world. And not just mainstream nonfiction or practical how-tos—I read about out-of-body experiences, mystical states of consciousness, psychic phenomena, spiritual systems, esoteric philosophies. The kind of stuff many people dismiss outright, sometimes with a
After years of wading through the self-help aisle, devouring spiritual texts, and doing the work (therapy, retreats, breathwork, and journaling prompts with more emotional range than the average indie film), I’ve started to notice a troubling pattern — one that Ken Wilber, ever the cartographer of consciousness, named with clinical precision: the Pre/Trans Fallacy. It’s
First off, I am totally geeking out over John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne’s collaboration, Mentoring the Machines. I’ve been a huge fan of Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and After Socrates lecture series and of course, Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid process. When they got together to look at the impact of artificial intelligence, I
In an age saturated with fragmented knowledge and shallow self-help, ancient Gnosticism offers an unusually cohesive path — not as a religious throwback, but as a framework for human development that integrates intellect, intuition, creativity, and transformation. The Four Pillars of Gnostic Practice provide a map not just for spiritual awakening, but for a richly
In the contemporary philosophical landscape, few voices have challenged the dominance of materialist metaphysics as effectively as Bernardo Kastrup. Through a unique blend of rigorous logic, scientific literacy, and metaphysical clarity, Kastrup has reintroduced idealism—not as a romantic or mystical counterpoint to science, but as a coherent, scientifically compatible worldview that places consciousness at the
When most people think of Søren Kierkegaard, they picture a gloomy Danish guy sitting in a candlelit room, writing about despair while wearing a cravat too tight for blood circulation. Fair enough. But hidden among the melancholy and the heavy coats, Kierkegaard had a secret superpower: he understood irony — not just as a literary
In a time when many feel adrift in a sea of information, distraction, and existential confusion, John Vervaeke’s lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis arrives like a lighthouse cutting through the fog. Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist and professor at the University of Toronto, brings a rare and powerful fusion to the table: rigorous philosophy,
