Addiction, Part One: The Causes
Sep. 10th, 2024 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteeleI have a fairly freakish resistance to addiction, but even I succumb to it sometimes, usually in the form of scrolling mindlessly through social media feeds late at night or overeating.
The Plutonian Age brought extreme oil wealth, a glut of cheap food that increased world population to 8 billion, etheric starvation for all, astral sepsis, and profound spiritual retardation. We live in a Dark Age of the soul. Technological advancements have put humans into orbit and onto the moon. The internet is nearly everywhere. Meanwhile, humans have never been more blockaded from the source that created the world.
The discovery of Pluto ushered in an age of severe dependence upon material goodies and unearned wealth via petroleum "slaves". On this very day, there are humans on this Earth whose wealth dwarfs the paltry fortunes of Kublai Khan and King Solomon. Even a peon like me enjoys luxuries that Roman emperors never possessed: chocolate covered strawberries in the middle of winter spring readily to mind; so does air conditioning and my car.
The trouble with being born and raised where we have never had to grow or own food or chop our own firewood is that most of us take luxuries for granted. Compounding the problem is the twin predicaments of etheric starvation and astral sepsis, the Phobos and Deimos of our time.
Etheric Starvation
I have talked about etheric starvation a few times. I keep talking about it because we are all soaking in it; it is the most common condition of our time. The etheric is not a separate realm, nor are any of the other subtle planes. Instead, it is an unseen layer that overlays and infuses material existence. The etheric is the plane of energy. This energy is also called magnetism, the animus, orgone, vibes, chi, ki, and prana. The etheric is the energy of life itself: without it, there is no weather, fire, or gravity. As you can guess, it is pretty important.
If you've ever kept lettuce too long in the fridge, the etheric dimension of lettuce is what gives it freshness and perkiness. As the lettuce is forgotten to mold and mildew, its etheric vitality departs and the new energy of infection and decay sets in. Within a few weeks, the lettuce takes on a new form due to this shift in the etheric: it becomes a moldy, slimy mess.
The etheric plane is easily corrupted. Ugly shapes do the job with brutal efficiency. Modern, blocky buildings built out of human scale, fields of concrete, mini mall hellscapes, and fantastically ugly suburban McMansions have a deleterious effect on etheric energy flows.
Plastics in general give off bad energy from creation to destruction. There is no way of getting away from plastics in our modern world no matter where you live: microplastics have been found in Antarctic snow. Air itself is a medium for plastic pollution. EMFs or electromagnetic frequencies are another etheric scourge. They strip the etheric plane of its vitality like a perpetual acid bath. Steel and other forms of iron slice and dice the etheric in the form of cars, trucks, and airplanes. We humans gained the convenience of air travel and gave away ever feeling truly nourished or well-rested from cradle to grave.
Astral Sepsis
The astral plane is one level more subtle than the etheric. Like the etheric, it overlays and infuses everything and is not a separate place anyone goes. Nevertheless, the astral is more difficult to understand than the etheric because it is subtle. Like water, the astral is both within us (it is the world of images) and part of the collective. You are made of mostly water. Water also exists in the lake, in the air, and in your electric teakettle. Yes, I have one of those despite being 100% American. The astral is always here and now. Your imagination -- the very one that enables you to turn a collection of written symbols known as letters and words into meaningful concepts, is a wholly astral plane phenomenon.
Thanks in part to constant, endemic etheric starvation and never being able to feel truly nourished or well-rested, most people have trouble with astral sepsis, present company included. Despite being raised in a genteel, upper middle class suburb by loving, good parents and being trained and graduated from the school of Midwestern Nice, I have thoughts that would offend those who believe they cannot be offended and terrify those who believe they cannot be frightened. I don't share these thoughts for the most part. There is enough darkness in the world without me having to add mine.
In my own case, I blame a great deal of my own astral sepsis upon the TV and movies I grew up watching. Those with normal brains who watched the same shows and movies didn't twist the material into violent and abhorrent shapes, but I did. I largely stopped watching TV and movies about 20 years ago, though I still watch enough rom coms and musicals with my mother on the weekends to qualify as semi-Hollywood literate. Visual media is inherently poisonous on the astral plane, and just as some people become sicker than others when they subsist upon junk food, some people become sicker than others when exposed to trashy visual media.
Porn-Addled Apes
Porn is pure astral poison. It is more of a smoking gun in the current divorce crisis than the inability of the middle class to afford housing, and that is truly saying something. Porn and its close cousin, video games, create an astral dependence that mainly afflicts the male of the species. I need not describe how countless men are drawn into porn, but I will anyway. Maybe your origin story is different. A kid and his little buddy figures out how to get past Stepdad's passwords mainly for laughs and curiosity. Before they hit puberty, they dive into a self-pleasuring dopamine habit. With every year, the habit requires ever more extreme images to keep the juices flowing.
In the era of glossy magazines and VHS tapes, women were already unable to compete with the airbrushed hotties beckoning from the Victoria's Secret catalogue cover. Now we girls have to keep up with underage AI-enhanced bestiality. It is no wonder so many have chosen to drop out of the competition. The "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" aspect of dating doesn't exactly inspire womankind to search for the rare straight male who eschews porn for the real thing. He's the damn unicorn!
In the Ogham (a Celtic form of runes) there is a symbol that looks like an X with a vertical line through it known as Koad. I have named this symbol Confluence because it looks like the intersection of three roads. When I read Ogham, Koad symbolizes a situation that is both self-created and the natural result of factors out of anyone's control.
When we fall prey to addiction, to some degree it is our own fault and to some degree it is due to what we cannot help, such as genetics or environment. As I tell anyone who draws Koad when I read for them, it is the querent's job to figure out the factors he can improve. The others can only be avoided, ameliorated, or ignored most of the time.
None of us can help the current milieu of etheric starvation and astral sepsis. Anyone who thinks voting in a new set of leaders or farting off to live in a Unabomber-inspired doomstead will help is an idiot. The only thing we can change is the way we react to crappy circumstances, to badly paraphrase Marcus Aurelius.
Next week, I will talk about what we can do to help the addict in our life, even if that addict is staring us down in the mirror.
The Plutonian Age brought extreme oil wealth, a glut of cheap food that increased world population to 8 billion, etheric starvation for all, astral sepsis, and profound spiritual retardation. We live in a Dark Age of the soul. Technological advancements have put humans into orbit and onto the moon. The internet is nearly everywhere. Meanwhile, humans have never been more blockaded from the source that created the world.
The discovery of Pluto ushered in an age of severe dependence upon material goodies and unearned wealth via petroleum "slaves". On this very day, there are humans on this Earth whose wealth dwarfs the paltry fortunes of Kublai Khan and King Solomon. Even a peon like me enjoys luxuries that Roman emperors never possessed: chocolate covered strawberries in the middle of winter spring readily to mind; so does air conditioning and my car.
The trouble with being born and raised where we have never had to grow or own food or chop our own firewood is that most of us take luxuries for granted. Compounding the problem is the twin predicaments of etheric starvation and astral sepsis, the Phobos and Deimos of our time.
Etheric Starvation
I have talked about etheric starvation a few times. I keep talking about it because we are all soaking in it; it is the most common condition of our time. The etheric is not a separate realm, nor are any of the other subtle planes. Instead, it is an unseen layer that overlays and infuses material existence. The etheric is the plane of energy. This energy is also called magnetism, the animus, orgone, vibes, chi, ki, and prana. The etheric is the energy of life itself: without it, there is no weather, fire, or gravity. As you can guess, it is pretty important.
If you've ever kept lettuce too long in the fridge, the etheric dimension of lettuce is what gives it freshness and perkiness. As the lettuce is forgotten to mold and mildew, its etheric vitality departs and the new energy of infection and decay sets in. Within a few weeks, the lettuce takes on a new form due to this shift in the etheric: it becomes a moldy, slimy mess.
The etheric plane is easily corrupted. Ugly shapes do the job with brutal efficiency. Modern, blocky buildings built out of human scale, fields of concrete, mini mall hellscapes, and fantastically ugly suburban McMansions have a deleterious effect on etheric energy flows.
Plastics in general give off bad energy from creation to destruction. There is no way of getting away from plastics in our modern world no matter where you live: microplastics have been found in Antarctic snow. Air itself is a medium for plastic pollution. EMFs or electromagnetic frequencies are another etheric scourge. They strip the etheric plane of its vitality like a perpetual acid bath. Steel and other forms of iron slice and dice the etheric in the form of cars, trucks, and airplanes. We humans gained the convenience of air travel and gave away ever feeling truly nourished or well-rested from cradle to grave.
Astral Sepsis
The astral plane is one level more subtle than the etheric. Like the etheric, it overlays and infuses everything and is not a separate place anyone goes. Nevertheless, the astral is more difficult to understand than the etheric because it is subtle. Like water, the astral is both within us (it is the world of images) and part of the collective. You are made of mostly water. Water also exists in the lake, in the air, and in your electric teakettle. Yes, I have one of those despite being 100% American. The astral is always here and now. Your imagination -- the very one that enables you to turn a collection of written symbols known as letters and words into meaningful concepts, is a wholly astral plane phenomenon.
Thanks in part to constant, endemic etheric starvation and never being able to feel truly nourished or well-rested, most people have trouble with astral sepsis, present company included. Despite being raised in a genteel, upper middle class suburb by loving, good parents and being trained and graduated from the school of Midwestern Nice, I have thoughts that would offend those who believe they cannot be offended and terrify those who believe they cannot be frightened. I don't share these thoughts for the most part. There is enough darkness in the world without me having to add mine.
In my own case, I blame a great deal of my own astral sepsis upon the TV and movies I grew up watching. Those with normal brains who watched the same shows and movies didn't twist the material into violent and abhorrent shapes, but I did. I largely stopped watching TV and movies about 20 years ago, though I still watch enough rom coms and musicals with my mother on the weekends to qualify as semi-Hollywood literate. Visual media is inherently poisonous on the astral plane, and just as some people become sicker than others when they subsist upon junk food, some people become sicker than others when exposed to trashy visual media.
Porn-Addled Apes
Porn is pure astral poison. It is more of a smoking gun in the current divorce crisis than the inability of the middle class to afford housing, and that is truly saying something. Porn and its close cousin, video games, create an astral dependence that mainly afflicts the male of the species. I need not describe how countless men are drawn into porn, but I will anyway. Maybe your origin story is different. A kid and his little buddy figures out how to get past Stepdad's passwords mainly for laughs and curiosity. Before they hit puberty, they dive into a self-pleasuring dopamine habit. With every year, the habit requires ever more extreme images to keep the juices flowing.
In the era of glossy magazines and VHS tapes, women were already unable to compete with the airbrushed hotties beckoning from the Victoria's Secret catalogue cover. Now we girls have to keep up with underage AI-enhanced bestiality. It is no wonder so many have chosen to drop out of the competition. The "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" aspect of dating doesn't exactly inspire womankind to search for the rare straight male who eschews porn for the real thing. He's the damn unicorn!
In the Ogham (a Celtic form of runes) there is a symbol that looks like an X with a vertical line through it known as Koad. I have named this symbol Confluence because it looks like the intersection of three roads. When I read Ogham, Koad symbolizes a situation that is both self-created and the natural result of factors out of anyone's control.
When we fall prey to addiction, to some degree it is our own fault and to some degree it is due to what we cannot help, such as genetics or environment. As I tell anyone who draws Koad when I read for them, it is the querent's job to figure out the factors he can improve. The others can only be avoided, ameliorated, or ignored most of the time.
None of us can help the current milieu of etheric starvation and astral sepsis. Anyone who thinks voting in a new set of leaders or farting off to live in a Unabomber-inspired doomstead will help is an idiot. The only thing we can change is the way we react to crappy circumstances, to badly paraphrase Marcus Aurelius.
Next week, I will talk about what we can do to help the addict in our life, even if that addict is staring us down in the mirror.
