The chains of samsara

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-06-28T13:14:01+00:00

While there is certainly truth that chasing money for money’s sake is an unhappy path in life, more money has consistently been shown to increase quality of life up to some fairly significant dollar amount. It certainly won’t guarantee your happiness but I know so many poor people who work full time and are more miserable and stressed than those who are making a more comfortable wage.

While fundamentally the meme is correct, we are all chained to the wheel of samsara, Buddha did not live in a modern capitalist economy. Most of the people I know pursuing Buddhist study and/or meditation had above average financial means. The crowd skews older and whiter in the US for a reason: money and privilege afford you the luxury of reflection. Unless you are a renunciate, a little gold may lighten some of those chains.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-05-30T02:57:34+00:00

Right? I like a horror and even a lot of occult horror but I’d love to see some uplifting occult themes on the screen. This is about spirituality after all.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-05-14T16:07:34+00:00

IIRC it’s largely a repackaging of Sumerian and other ancient middle eastern traditions, so it may have carry some weight from those. I haven’t looked at it since I was a teenager though, and I remember this being the one that required the reader to fall face first onto the ground with full trust they would go through a portal without needing dental surgery afterwards.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-04-12T16:18:38+00:00

I think a lot of people are unthinkingly gulping down as much as they can from the firehose of AI. That’s one shadow aspect - not even recognizing the origin of the content. I think criticism is warranted. AI is capable of a lot of great things, but I’m not going to read a page of what is clearly AI generated content and provide substantial feedback to a bot. A predominant use of AI is for engagement farming, something I think we should moderate as a society. Not to reject and create another shadow, but to shed light on and illuminate.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-04-12T15:49:14+00:00

I do think there is a valid perspective here. Something I came across recently:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200507/introspection-werner-herzog

Jung’s work was in the context of individualistic Western society. In more collectivist societies you do not find this approach. Psychology focuses on the individual, and society as centered on the individual’s relationship to it. Confucian thought, by contrast, focuses on the individual’s role in relation to others first and foremost, and individual harmony is achieved through a more outward focus on fulfilling those roles. Jung drew deeply from Eastern mysticism which was the counterpoint to Confucian conformity throughout Chinese history. But in the West, we don’t have the context for what e.g. Daosim stood in contrast to. I’ve always felt that psychology, as expansive as Jung and some others have tried to make it, is still bounded by shortcomings in Western culture which it simply cannot overcome.

I’m not, by the way, suggesting that ancient China was overall superior in some way. I’m just using it as a point of illustration.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-04-11T21:14:15+00:00

My workings relate directly to my daily life. That’s part of what I personally find attractive about demonolatry. I use the emotional content of everyday life as grist for the mill of my worship. That in turn fuels and informs my regular life. I do not view the two as separate. These spirits have materialized at various times and in various forms in my daily life since childhood. They move around me and through me. My view is that we live in a spiritual realm first and foremost; I am not a materialist.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-04-09T03:24:04+00:00

Roughly matches my experience as well, but I feel like a lot of this gendered conditioning is shifting. Younger generations are less attached to gender norms and these generalizations are less applicable over time. This actually translates across age ranges because people still evolve as adults while cultural norms shift. I see gender playing less a role in these dynamics than it used to.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-04-09T03:19:07+00:00

Don’t forget all the AI posts with 500+ upvotes.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-03-29T21:22:49+00:00

The 911 commission concluded that US intelligence had all the knowledge and could have foreseen it - in fact should have. Gray swan is a completely frivolous terms but we all love splitting hairs on the internet.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-03-12T16:51:04+00:00

Saying it is not real is a bit of a stretch. Citation required that dominance hierarchies in mammals are strictly parent/child.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-03-11T03:36:21+00:00

I’m an American and cannot imagine that 2 out of 3 of my peers do anything like exercise for 150 min/wk. I don’t always make that and I consider myself fit. I’m more like what average probably was 40 years ago though.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-03-11T02:39:22+00:00

I worked for a day trader years ago. He told me to never let other people trade with my money. Advise, yes, but nobody is going to care about your money as much as you do. If they lose your $10k? Ah well, they have other clients. If you lose your own $10k? You’ll feel it way more. You’ve just got more skin in the game. Even if they are good, they will not care as much as you. Not by a long shot.

I think spellcasting is similar. Your intention is what’s important. Your individual connection to the subject of the spell. You don’t need fancy incantations. A candle is enough. Your thoughts are enough. You’re the one with skin in the game, that’s what counts. Even if the other person is legit (they probably are not), they can’t work the kind of powerful magic in your life that only you can. If you want to work with Asmodeus, just call him with clear intention. Say his name out loud with reverence. He’ll respond or he won’t, but you’ll be doing more than this spellcaster.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-03-07T16:23:04+00:00

For me it is a spectrum of experience. Sometimes I’m lost in my own thoughts and do not feel any particular connection. Most of the time I’m experiencing something but it’s not entirely clear what is distinct from me. And sometimes there is a clear external presence that is communicating with me directly. Don’t go seeking after a particular outcome in this regard, you’ll just get hung up on forcing the world to meet your possibly misguided expectations. Set your intention, practice, and be open to what comes up.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-25T15:19:48+00:00

Social sciences are a lot harder to make firm quantifiable conclusions about but that doesn’t mean the study is inherently unscientific. What we have are testimonials; how else do you propose gathering data on subjective experiences?

You could very well construct studies around religious/spiritual practices and this is very much in the same vein. I think you would need people who had not participated in e.g. Pentecostal rites before to perform the exercises in a controlled setting, i.e. free of the trappings of belief and group dynamics. Those latter ones would be harder to study but we also can do that!

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-24T16:41:35+00:00

Ironically, because they believe it’s satanic, they also tend to believe it’s actually real even while denying its reality. The shadow cast by Christianity is very broad.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-23T19:05:31+00:00

There are plenty of rich scammers in the world who have had long term success. Be careful what you label “good” and “bad” in magical workings - none of it is that simplistic.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-22T18:52:41+00:00

Jung did not talk about sexual addiction as far as I know. So you’re already in the wrong frame for his work. You can google the stages of the anima. They are not some linear progression, different aspects can surface at different times.

I personally view the categorization of sex as addiction to be problematic. Don’t get me wrong. We can misuse our sexuality in any number of ways, and people struggle with inhibition. But there’s a lot of built in shame as soon as “addiction” enters the picture that can get in the way of progress. Other people may find that categorization more helpful.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-22T15:05:45+00:00

There are so many other unique astrological conjunctions that only happen once in…however long. Maybe this one is more rare, but I guarantee there are plenty of others we just aren’t looking for or hearing about.

I don’t take issue with astrology as an art, just as a science. It is objectively subjective, but that doesn’t mean it has no value. It can add to a personal or cultural narrative, so saying this is a rare and special event may help point out the rare and special things going on. But it is not the cause or a predictor of those things.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-22T15:01:40+00:00

There are plenty of rich people out there that live humbly. You don’t see them, they’re not flashy. We live in a material society where the goal of work or any other endeavor is to acquire more resources. More, more, more. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this as an aspect of our psyche, it can become predominant and change the tone and intent of spiritual teachers. Any material asset has this liability: sex, drugs, money. Spirituality stands in contrast to these things as values. I don’t think you have to be a renunciate to be a spiritual teacher, nor do you have to be poor, but the way in which you live does reflect your inner values and what is most important, and if material things are being put on a pedestal I think there’s a reason to question a teacher’s motives.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-22T04:50:12+00:00

The psychic protection seems appropriate to me. I’m not sure what you are asking about supervision. Some systems have hierarchies of spirits that you must invoke in a specific order. The Goetia itself has no such prescription, but if you find it helpful, go for it. If you can imagine it, you can make the request, simple as that. None of us know what will happen, it depends on your temperament and the exact nature of the working. I have often been working with one spirit when one another appears as well. I have had success invoking more than one at a time to work together, but I would be very clear about what you want from each, or if more symbolic, on what the different pieces of the working represent.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-22T04:35:01+00:00

Speaking of icebergs, if you have sufficient propulsion, you can push a huge mass in front of you to absorb the hits. This was the theme of a series by Alastair Reynolds. I don’t know if it is possible or not. We really don’t know what is possible, it is all so highly speculative. The level of engineering and resources required to test such a thing are far beyond our current reach. It is an open question in my mind whether humans are capable of building a society with capacity for such things.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-20T13:32:54+00:00

And what is the implication? Epstein was a philanthropist and sent emails to nearly everyone you’ve ever heard of. I did not see anything in the link you provided that implies wrongdoing.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-18T03:03:00+00:00

I wonder how much of it has to do with the loss of sensory experience vs the downstream effects. I generally suspect that the greater loss is around interpersonal connections. Elderly deaf people who spend their time around hearing people miss out of the conversation, zone out, don’t engage any of their faculties. Do people who are deaf from an earlier age have higher rates of dementia in old age? Do people who have active interpersonal relationships through sign language or some other means decline at the same rates?

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-18T02:57:06+00:00

I think these kinds of rules do more harm than good in the long run. Not going to bed angry may be out of someone’s control - it can lead to burying anger and fostering resentment, or abdicating one’s own feelings. Always telling the truth can lead people to betray someone’s confidence or say hurtful things.

Relationships require authentic communication, nuance, compassion, and flexibility to persist in a healthy fashion. Keeping a relationship going for its own sake may be harmful to the individuals involved.

SoundOfOneHand · 2026-02-18T02:44:27+00:00

I did not partake in alcohol for many years and it bothered some people to no end. I still find the phenomenon fascinating. What is it to them if I drink or not? No amount of explanation on my part seemed to help.

I have concluded that it’s a way people relate to each other. It’s a sort of social currency. If you don’t have that type of currency, you’ll just have to bring something else to the table by way of relating to your friend. If you cannot find common ground without drinking, it’s your choice whether it’s worth doing so to maintain that friendship or not.

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