Platonic Spirituality

I admit, the title is a slight misnomer, we are exploring Platonic spirituality at depth through the prayer presented in Laws, however, we are doing this with help from Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and neuroscience. What inspired this was reading Plato’s laws that outlined part of the spiritual practice. My intention is to give this outline more depth, by connecting it with other practices outlined by later authors and the immense body of neuroscience that provides the neurobiological basis for how one experiences spirituality and religion. 

CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. Attachment
3. Prayer blueprint
4. A dialogue on Spirituality and religion
5. The analysis of the blueprint
6. Neurology of mystical and religious experiences 
7. Spiritual exercises 
8. Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

The simulated dialogue is based on conversations, reflections, and reading I’ve probably had over a decade. The context or the framing is this; most people I’ve interacted with come from a Catholic background and society, but aren’t Catholics by their own identification or experience, which is the majority of the Flemish. The Norwegians I’ve spoken with or interacted with echo similar sentiments as their separation of church and state is even more pronounced than in Belgium. These conversations typically take place with Millenials (as defined by 1980 to 1994, but older Zoomers (from 1995) have also been involved). Meaning, this dialogue is not aimed at people that have a robust faith, religious sense, and or a spiritual life. Rather, it’s aimed at people who consider themself agnostic, atheistic, or deist (defined as someone who believes in some higher power, perhaps personified, but not any specific God as embodied by most religions. Spiritual but not religious.)

Because, in a sense, especially as they age, there is a natural curiosity as the evidence of their mortality mounts, and there is also a lot of skepticism. Now, the simulated dialogue is an exploration of Platonic spirituality, in a technical sense, it’s not a debate about religion or rather, about religions. That is, for someone who is curious to explore IF there is something to faith, religion, spirituality, and God, and what this something else MIGHT mean, they could get some value from Plato’s schema. There is an uptick in religiousness that seems to be spreading, but seeing I’m in a bubble on X, it’s hard to make an estimation to the depth and breadth of this. To reiterate, my own experiences paint this dialogue strongly because I have not many actual religious people with an actual felt spiritual life, and obviously these people aren’t in need of a framework that might lead to a spiritual life, so they aren’t the target audience. Furthermore, the dialogue is not a history lesson about the genealogy of religion or Platonism. The point of the dialogue is to explore the practicality of Platonic spirituality, at the very least this part we will explore, is the prayer as this is not an extensive exploration of Platonic spirituality because that would require a more extensive framework, so put on your curious skeptic hat and get on board. 

Curious Skeptic: Why write this at all? I mean, “we” have religion, and “spirituality”, right? 

Platonic Mystagogue: Do we? 

Curious Skeptic: What do you mean? 

Platonic Mystagogue: I mean that “we” have nothing but a few snippets from cognitive top-down models, that “we” have very little connection with and even less bearing on how we live our lives. With that I mean, most Westerners don’t have an actual spiritual life, they are not religious, let alone have profound mystical, religious, and or sacred experiences, especially if we take psychedelics out of the equation. 

Curious Skeptic: So what’s the point then? Surely, people don’t need this? If they did we would notice. 

Platonic Mystagogue: Ah, my friend, the way I see it we have two things to explore. Firstly, the point of all of this, and secondly, the need. As far as noticing goes, it depends on where your attention is placed, there is a push online on X (and to a certain degree on IG) to traditional, or to be more precise, the original notions and structure of religion. What does that tell us? Allow me to elaborate on the first point. Why even explore this? In my estimation people have enormous gaps in their religious and spiritual models, that is, the practices and frameworks are gone as they have eroded over time. They don’t have a coherent model and sense-making mechanisms that work in tandem, there is no attachment or connection to these fragmented models they have. So “we” have fragmented, eroded, disconnected, and superficial models that fail to provide the EXPERIENCE and FEELING of being connected to the divine and the sacred. What very often is failed to recognize is that the expression of religious and spiritual texts is bound by the constraints of their time, culture, and literary practice. Culture, literary practices, and society have evolved, but our basic needs have not. In some ways, it’s like we’re trying to “force install” a different operating system on a device that doesn’t support it. The case I want to make is that the Platonic model, in terms of expression, is typically more accessible to a Western mind than for instance the Eastern Buddism model. Quoting Plotinus, the father of Neoplatonism:
“Plotinus makes a clear distinction between, on the one hand, “instruction”, which speaks about its object in an exterior way, and, on the other, the “path”, which truly leads to concrete knowledge of the Good: “We are instructed about it by analogies, negations, and the knowledge of things which come from it… we are led towards it by purification, virtues, inner settings in order, and ascents into the intelligible world.” The idea is to bring a more complete model, and if not more complete than at least more practical, that leads to connection through the “path” or rather the practice and process of these practices. 

Curious Skeptic: Hm, there’s definitely some logic present here. So are you telling me people “lost” the practice of religion and spirituality? 

Platonic Mystagogue: How many people do you know that do anything of the sort, excluding your grandmother or grandparents? 

Curious Skeptic: I, well, okay, you got me there. What then am I to expect to find in this conversation? 

Platonic Mystagogue: Who knows what you come to find? The exploration that we are entering into is to discover the first principle of religion and spirituality, the experience of it, and how this experience works on a neurological level. And in doing so, to show you the practices that have led to these mystical and religious experiences, and how we can bring more of this into our daily lives without it seeming conceited, fake, or unnatural. That’s why we are starting with Plato, for the sake of intelligibility and because Plato is also at the roots of the theology of Christianity, so it’s a return to the origin of where these practices have come from. 

ATTACHMENT

We’re starting with attachment because spirituality and/or religion (depending on definitions) are based on attachment. It is more emotion-oriented than anything else. The most religious and or spiritual (in the proper sense, without making a show of it) FEEL connected to God/the universe/nature/Logos/reality. Whatever the conception and terminology is, it's a visceral experience out of which a cognitive model and conception arise. This rarely, if ever, works the other way around. I've never seen anyone cognate (think, reason) their way into a religious, spiritual, mystical, sacred experience. It is unlikely to happen because they are two separate networks and functions (this doesn’t mean they can’t “overlap” or “fire together” separate but interconnected). And should it happen, and has never been presented on my radar, then it’s a rarity and outlier. Now to clarify, this doesn’t mean that contemplation can’t lead to an experience of these, it can, but that’s very different than trying to get there with propositions and cognitive models (without a practice, emphasis here) only. 

That's the gap between people's life and spiritual life. And why most don't have one based on experience or have any attachment to it. You don't think your way to the experience of God or anything of the sort. You don't think your way to any experience. I'm not religious in a modern sense, if I define myself as such it's in the traditional sense of what it used to mean and convey. Same with spirituality, the modern perception is not my model. I have had many spiritual, religious, and mystical experiences (all without touching psychedelics). And those experiences, alongside the classical Greek frameworks, have built my models and conceptions. I’m leading with a personal anecdote because it is personal, as this is what I experience. I don't read the classical Greek philosophy spiritual/religious texts and then think out of this model. I FEEL connected to it and it resonates, it feels natural, it makes sense (not all of it obviously), and I understand it because I've experienced and experienced these things often (like the concept of the inner daemon). I don't need to do anything other than the practices that create a spiritual life, through what Pierre Hadot calls spiritual exercises (that come from Platonism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism). Even strength training can be a spiritual exercise once both the experience and the framework/model/paradigm fall into place. 

Different brains and minds have different sense-making mechanisms. The spiritual practices largely stay the same, as in meditation, contemplation, reflection, and introspection. How they express themselves is a completely different matter. The same models don't fit everyone, just like the same diet doesn't fit everyone, it wouldn't make sense. Though, as for diet, the gist stays the same. You eat what you need to eat to thrive and be healthy. You practice what you need to practice to be a virtuous human being. In that sense, it is really simple. You are the ONLY bridge between the divine/sacred and the mortal. No one can be that for you, you can't outsource your connection to life/nature/reality and by extension to God/ the universe.

In a way, this has always been important, I'm just keenly aware it (this spiritual connection, practice, models) have become even more important as I age, and continue to grow in importance. Having the experiences I have, regularly on a daily level (when my biology is in a decent place), they really blow my mind. What blows my mind even more is that the practices, connections, and models are in such short supply in a feeling-based way for most people. I shiver at the thought of not having these conceptions to help support and guide me, as they are fundamentally present in everyone (archetypes being an example). The models around spirituality and religion, generally, seem to turn more people off than bring them closer to them. Precisely because there's a lack of bio-individual models. So then we return to a question of attachment, this is what I attach, connect, and resonate with, and perhaps it gives you the keys to do the same, accounting for the variances in expression in models and behaviors. 

PRAYER BLUEPRINT

1. God 

(as the measure of all things) 

2. The Gods

(Underworld, Olympus, gods of the state.)

3. The Spirits

4. Heroes

5. Ancestral gods

(think of this as guardians, guardian angels)

6. Living parents

(and ancestors at large)

A DIALOGUE

So let's play this out a little more so that perhaps it makes some sort of sense, or at least seems rational. Let's have an imaginary conversation (welcome to my brain). 

Platonic Mystagogue: What seems to be bothering my curious and skeptical friend? I get the sense, if my senses aren’t failing me, that you are conflicted, perhaps even confused, and if not confused, at least driven to find some type of understanding and perhaps meaning in the metaphysical dimension. How can I aid you in this? 

Curious Skeptic: I have been brought up separated from the church, and the models and have had no religious, mystical, or spiritual experiences. It just hit me that I’ve entered the middle of my life and that the sands of time are quickly passing through the hourglass. I have a lot of questions, and fears if I’m being frank, but I have no grip on the metaphysical. You’re right that I’m seeking understanding, the level of meaning I experience is superficial and fleeting. No matter how much I attempt to escape the feeling of my lack of spiritual sense and flood myself with the artificial that makes me feel good and temporarily forget, my feet land right back on slippery footing. It seems like I can’t grasp anything when I feel I’m spiritually slipping in light of the march of time. So perhaps, if you can, you can help me find some understanding in all this? At the beginning of our dialogue, you seemed to elude that there is a separation between spirituality and religion. So is there a difference between spirituality and religion?

Platonic Mystagogue: I can understand that it can be scary to navigate life without an anchor in this way, especially in light of facing and embracing one’s mortality, though I’m unsure if I can console you, I do believe I can make you, my good fellow, gain deeper understanding of the metaphysical, and perhaps lead you to the practices that give you a feeling for it. 

As per your question, there technically isn’t a difference. They were once one and the same. As we look at the development of philosophy becoming more and more removed from its root as a way of life into theoretical discourse, so it follows that the development of splitting theology of philosophy took place not too long after, and later the splitting between spirituality and religion. Religion became untethered from a way of life, daily life, community, society, and a nation, in some ways it became its own institution, and this is where we can see the divergence from spirituality and religion, and thus modern religion as a centralized institution no longer concerned with your connection to God, rather concerned with being an authority ON God (the only authority, according to them). So it follows that without much of a spiritual life, which is embodied and experienced, and a top-down authority being the gatekeeper of a religious model, people were left with neither a spiritual life nor a religious life. So if were to define a difference, it would be that spirituality is your connection and experience to the metaphysical realm, alongside the practices that come with it. And that religion is the “jacket”, style, school, and model this comes in. For Plato, and the Hellenic culture, there was no separation at all.

Curious Skeptic: What’s the function then, of religion and spirituality?

Platonic Mystagogue: In religion, at its core, we have a sense-making narrative and model of reality, society, and the self. In it we thus have a code of behavior, the social contract, and “moral structure of the universe” captured, expressed, and delivered through a story in a way that anyone could follow and understand. It, the story, takes into account the unconscious forces that are present in human beings. Take the Hellenic gods, demigods, heroes, and daemons and how they represented facts, aspects, drivers, and forces of behavior and psychology. Now, it’s pertinent to add, that like with most stories, there’s a progressive sensationalism to them. The core message they aimed to convey and deliver is still present, but the presentation got bolder and more sensational as time progressed. Spirituality then is the experience and the practices that foster this connection to religion, the models and narratives, that orient us towards the metaphysical realm, our subconscious realm, and how to deal with both of them in a constructive virtuous way so that we can overcome and manage parts of our nature, and the parts of reality and nature, that can be destructive.

Curious Skeptic: So, if I'm getting this right, religion isn't just about a set of rules or beliefs but also acts as a framework for understanding the deeper, often subconscious, aspects of human nature and behavior through its narratives? But here's what puzzles me: How do we differentiate between what’s a metaphor and what should be taken literally in these religious stories? And secondly, why do we need spiritual practices when science and psychology can explore human nature?

Platonic Mystagogue: This is where first principle thinking and history come into play. Most religions share a codified behavioral overlap, think ten commandments style to maintain the social and thus moral fabric of society. When we look at behavioral patterns in a long enough time frame, we can see the same type of patterns coming back. So anything that navigates the day-to-day needs and constraints of behavior can be taken more literally, or rather, can be taken more seriously as a means to maintain cooperation and collaboration. As for the second part of your question, in antiquity they didn’t have the scientific tools we have, so they were using the science of their day, and the psychology of their day was philosophy, seeing that the field of psychology came forth out of philosophy. Ancient philosophers spent their time figuring out how the human psyche worked and came up with scientific theories for how reality, humanity and God worked. Plato’s and Aristotle’s theorems hit the mark on many of these, even though there were some gaps (as should be obvious without the tools we have today) and some of the expressions (the narrative) were off and yet still very close. The point is that even though science (then and now) and psychology (then and now) can explore human nature, you don’t get an experience through a theorem, you need to participate in model and narrative through a practice, a practice such a prayer, contemplation, meditation, and introspection.

Curious Skeptic: Alright, that makes some sense, But practically speaking, how do these practices like prayer, contemplation, meditation, and introspection actually lead someone to have a spiritual or mystical experience? What are these practices supposed to do to our minds or perceptions?

Platonic Mystagogue: The practices can be considered the gateway for the experience. The formula is usually the same: space, time, and stillness. The neurology of these experiences is expansive, and we will explore this in depth. The first thing to understand is that we’re constantly being bombarded with information. There’s a hierarchy of information processing at play. New input/stimulus (information) needs to be processed first. So think about it this way, if you are constantly stimulated in an unrelenting stream of input, how is there room or space to process things at depth? This then is the point of creating that space, so that deeper processing can occur, and access is regained to input that hasn’t been fully processed because there was neither the time, space, or stillness. In a way, or rather in many ways, we are pushed into a survival mode, an instinctual way of being, that is reacting to the most present information (hyperactively at most times). 

Curious Skeptic: Okay, that makes sense, I can get behind that. Are you telling me that when I have time, stillness, and space I will have a religious or mystical experience? 

Platonic Mystagogue: My dear fellow, you sure are eager. It seems like you are keen to exact a guarantee from me. Either way, doing the practices has a tendency to lead to these experiences. However, what comes to you is unknown. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that having decent working biology and neurology does a lot of the heavy lifting for this, regardless it’s important to understand that these practices shift biology and neurology in favor to experience altered states. And that is precisely in these altered states we, more often than not, experience a mystical, sacred, or religious experience that can express and manifest itself in different ways. Although, let’s call it “antiquated”, praying is a relic of these practices, although it can be found in a set of practices that several notable ancient Hellenic authors pointed out such as Plotinus, Philo of Alexandria, and Plutarch. An example of this, written by Pierre Hadot before we revisit prayer, is “Philo of Alexandria giving us a fairly complete panorama of Stoico-Platonic inspired philosophical therapeutics. One of these lists enumerates the following elements: research (zetesis), thorough investigation (skepsis), reading (anagnosis), listening (akroasis), attention (proshe), self mastery (enkratia), and indifference to indifferent things. the other (list) names successively: reading, meditations (meletai), therapies of the passions, remembrance of good things, self-mastery, and the accomplishment of duties.” In a way, praying then directs our attention to the forces of life, nature, reality, and what makes our life possible (and perhaps worthwhile).  

Curious Skeptic:  These therapeutics seem to hold some value, I’ll give you that. I’m not sure I agree with the prayer model, when I don’t believe in God, why would I start with God? That makes no sense to me, and as you yourself point out: I have no connection or experience to God, so this puzzle doesn’t seem to fit.

Platonic Mystagogue: Yes, you'd be right to point that out. That was also the overarching point of a preamble to this dialogue. In Plato's writing, we often find this notion of God, which can be expressed as the force that drives life. This is where both the inherited model and belief are often at odds, because you, in the first order don’t have a model that serves you, in this particular case, if you can’t get behind the man in the sky paradigm, and that there is no experience of the “allness” and “oneness” of reality, nature, the universe, or the other sensations that tend to come with a connection the divine and otherworldly. That's why in Laws, God is called the measure of all things. Very often God is seen as the logos, the pattern of how life unfolds. However, the limit of the cognitive model in and of itself doesn't lead to an experience or the experience of God.

Curious Skeptic: Aren't we putting the cart before the horse then, in this sense? To “get” a cognitive model without the experience?

Platonic Mystagogue: My dear skeptic, how wonderfully astute you are. The model is the orientation of the practice that leads to an experience. Rather, the way we think about it all matters less than the application of the practice to pray, or rather to pay attention and honor, to this “measure of all things”. That's essentially the point that is being made in the dialogues of Laws, to focus on the practice of conferring honor according to the outlined schema. This doesn’t imply the model doesn’t matter, it most certainly does if it keeps you from practicing. The model informs the practice, and the practice informs the model, they are ontologically interdependent and interconnected. 

Curious Skeptic: The model and the practice are interconnected, sure. But how does one practice something one does not believe in?” 

Platonic Mystagogue: This in essence requires a deeper look at the neurobiological. We will return to the neurobiological requirements in a second. The practice sets up the scene, if you will, to experience this. In modernity, we've gotten both too literal and too skeptical, not without reason, though as is typical, we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater and subsequently the bathtub. We’ve degraded, demeaned, and devalued the psychological scaffolding that keeps our base nature in check. The frame and practice of religion matter far more than the package/wrapping it comes in. Which is something you can fundamentally see in each religion.  Would you know what the sun is, if you had never seen it? To extend this line of thinking, a blind person can’t see the sun, but they experience the sun nonetheless because of its radiant heat. Now how would you explain the sun to someone who never has seen it, never felt it, and thus never experienced it to any degree? You’d be stuck making propositional cases, which don’t lead to an experience. Because of the bi-directionality between the practice and the model, a case Plotinus makes very eloquently as pointed out by Pierre Hadot: “Plotinus makes a clear distinction between, on the one hand, “instruction”, which speaks about its object in an exterior way, and, on the other, the “path” some will have a model that either comes with an experience, and a practice, or orients them as such to both. Whereas, when someone has the practice, the model makes itself clear(er) down the line. Furthermore, the practices change the brain, it does this on multiple levels: communication, anatomy (such as enlarging and reducing the volume of certain brain areas), connectivity between regions, neurochemical, and even genetic expression. The error in perception, the way I see it, is that you are focusing on not believing in the cognitive model, but surely you can understand, and thus believe, that these practices change your brain. 

Curious Skeptic: I feel like you’re trying to slip one by me. So what’s the use of the prayer then? 

Platonic Mystagogue: Depends if it is a conversation between you and the metaphysical, or you are just trying to “gain” something. And what do we define as useful in this context? The functionality of the prayer, or the functionality of praying, is taking a moment of attention toward and immersion in the metaphysical dimensions and the energies you wish to attend to or invoke. Of course, it can be a dialogue, however, a dialogue of gain is a different orientation with different constraints, that are also more difficult to reward because they depend on an outcome and not a process. Neurobiologically that means that the reward is tied to the outcome, so if the outcome doesn’t occur, the reward does not occur. There’s nothing in there for dopamine to “attach” to, and so an aspect of the feeling is left by the wayside. Rather, when we change the orientation of praying, and the practice of the prayer, we get a reward for the action and intention. In actuality, it doesn’t even need to be a conversation, it can just be an acknowledgment of this dimension, and afterward, perhaps the models, either way, the reinforcement of reward through dopamine and acetylcholine (and later through oxytocin) will start occurring, neurologically solidifying this process and practice, and thus sensations will emerge. This is usually part of the model misalignment, where prayer has been used as a gain, the “Hey God, I need this from you”. Of course, it stands to reason that if nothing happens the way you hope or expect it to happen, you have a prediction error plus a lack of reward. Ergo, the only conclusion is: this doesn’t work. And how could it? It’s a certain lack of respect to only communicate when you need something. If a relationship with someone was only based on you communicating with them when you need something, that relationship would suffer and be over fast. The other in this relationship might find this disrespectful, no? Do you see my point? 

Curious Skeptic: I see, I haven’t thought about it this way before. Or rather, as far as my memory holds true, no one has ever explained it to me in such a way. It seems I might’ve disrespected our mystical entities, in as far as they exist of course. 

BLUEPRINT ANALYSIS

We explored attachment, the prayer blueprint, and the “functionality” thereof through a dialogue. So, let’s analyze the blueprint. To follow isn’t an exhaustive analysis and it’s my approach of sense making. Very often, I run into this notion, that this type of sense-making and psychological scaffolding is for a determined and constrained demographic. Perhaps your brain has to have the same sort of sense-making mechanisms as mine, or a need to understand it in multiple dimensions and layers, and if it makes sense, is intelligible, and understandable, it starts becoming practical. In writing this, I’m attempting to account for as much of my own bias as possible. I’m aware this isn’t for everyone, I do think, or strongly believe, it holds immense value as an exploration through the Platonic lens (to whatever degree such a small framework can do justice to such an immense lense). 

This is the original excerpt on which this framework is based: 

“Let’s be clear that the consequences of all this is the following doctrine (which is, I think, of all doctrines the finest and truest): if a good man sacrifices to the gods and keeps them constant company in his prayers and offerings and every kind of worship he can give them, this will be the best and noblest policy he can follow; it is the conduct that fits his character as nothing else can, and it is his most effective way of achieving a happy life. But if the wicked man does it, the results are bound to be just the opposite. Whereas the good man’s soul is clean, the wicked man’s soul is polluted and is never right for a good man or for God to receive gifts from unclean hands - which means that even if impious people do lavish a lot of attention on the gods, they are waiting their time, whereas the trouble taken by the pious is very much in season. So this is the target at which we should aim - but what “missiles” are we to use to hit it, and what “bow” is best carried to shoot them? Can we name these “weapons”? The first weapon in the armory will be to honor the gods of the underworld, next after those of Olympus, the patron gods of the state; the former should be allotted such secondary honors as the Even and the Left, while the latter should receive superior and contrasting honors like the Odd. That’s the best way a man can hit his target, piety. After these gods, a sensible man will worship the spirits, and after them the heroes. Next in priority will be rites celebrated according to law at private shrines dedicated to ancestral gods. Last come honors paid to living parents.”

– Plato, Laws. Book 4

Now let’s demystify the rest, not to take the magic out, but rather to build a framework around it so it can support the practice with something resembling logic. 

The art to follow is from Miboso (on x: @miboso_)

God:

Let’s be honest, I can’t demystify God, and neither would I want to. There are dimensions to explore in this department that provide narrative structures that go beyond the “man in the sky” paradigm. The idea that God is all-knowing is a good place to start. Let’s go through the steps of intelligence first, to illustrate what the scale is like look at this graph from Tim Urban’s Wait But Why blogpost on Artificial Intelligence. 

How are we feeling about our level of intelligence?  What’s my point? In case the image doesn’t make it clear if the distance is this big between a monkey and a human, and if the distance is THAT BIG between an Aritifial SuperIntelligence (ASI), How big do you think the distance needs to be between us and an all-knowing being? Considering how much we don’t know about nature, the universe, and reality, we can probably 100x the distance between ASI and God. I’m not trying to equivocate an AI to God, I’m only trying to point out how far “ALL knowing” is from us as a species of relative intelligence. So if God is an all-knowing being, beyond the man in the sky paradigm, we can’t even conceive a fraction of its intelligence, knowledge, or function. To segway to Plato's conception of God, let’s make a distinction between sentient and conscious. Sentient is alive, though with limited directiveness, bacteria and fungi, plants too, are sentient, we don’t attribute much consciousness to them. Now before you start thinking I’m going to equivocate God with bacteria, fungi, and plants, this is not the case I’m aiming to make. Rather, that what would make sense, given the complexity of nature, that God is the sentience of nature/reality. If reality is comprised of matter, energy, and information, and there is an entire quantum biological realm, there is nothing stopping the possibility of there being a quantum biological sentience (or being for that matter, if we try to define it as such). Where this inference comes from is that consciousness in beings seems to be (partially) generated by the electromagnetism from the brain. We’re “made in God’s image”, no? Perhaps, if we take this slightly less literally, we can look at it as the parameters that make up consciousness (this formula of energy, matter, and information). And that what animates reality and life as a whole is animating us. Heraclitus already proposed this: 

"This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures."

For Heraclitus, fire was not just a physical element but also a symbol of change, energy, and the divine ordering principle of the cosmos, the latter is the emphasis for the point I’m trying to make. This principle forms the basis of Plato's Laws, that God, is the divine ordering principle of the cosmos, and hence the “measure of all things”, the source of life, the zero point field of reality, the energy of consciousness and sentience. Whereas Timaeus is about God being a craftsman, the Demiurge, or organizer (do you see the pattern?). From the introduction to Timaeus from the Complete Works of Plato by John M. Cooper “He (Plato) introduces a creator god, the demiurge (Greek for craftsman), who crafts and brings order to the physical world by using the Forms as patterns.” The paradigm, or perspective, I’m highlighting is God as this ordering principle. Humans have a tendency to personify everything to make it relatable. Thunder from the sky? A God with a hammer that’s angry. Crazy storm on the sea? A God with a trident that’s angry. Let’s take it to a different level, your cat doing XYZ, “Well he must be thinking this or that.” Animals have affect and intelligence, the level of consciousness differs, the point is that we are masters in personifying, or rather “humanizing”, everything we come in contact with. This is a feature, not a bug, it is adaptive because the “ordering principle of the universe” is pretty damn abstract. An all-knowing being that looks like us in the sky, not so abstract, and a pretty functional model that explains phenomena without modern tools. This ordering principle, Logos, seems to be expressed as “generative grammar” in cognitive science, that is the process and principles of how life, reality, and nature work. And that it shows up, manifests, and expresses itself, through us and in us. “If you know the way broadly, you see it all things” A quote by Musashi, not specifically directed at this, but applicable to this. That’s why, or at least I presume this to be why, people have convergent and similar experiences of seeing/experience the “same” things like unity, oneness, ego death, and cosmic consciousness, and that their insights reflect seeing the same ordering principles in themselves as in nature and reality. 

“Further, we maintain that, necessarily, that which comes to be must come to be by the agency of some cause [speaking of the universe/cosmos]. Now to find the maker and father of this universe is hard enough, and even if I succeed [Timaeus speaking] to declare him to everyone is impossible. And so we must go back and raise this question about the universe: Which of the two models did the maker use when he fashioned it? Was it the one that does not change and stays the same, or the one that has come to be? Well, if this world of ours is beautiful and the craftsman is good, then clearly he looked at the eternal model. But if what it’s blasphemous to even sa is the case, then he looked at one that has come to be. Now surely it’s clear to all that it was the eternal model he looked at, for, of al the things that have come to be, our universe is the most beautiful, and of causes the craftsman is the most excellent. This, then, is how it has come to be: it is a work of craft, modeled after that which is changeless and is grasped by rational account, that is, by wisdom.”
- Plato, Timaeus, 

Now again, this is A model, I’m not making this out to be it is THE model. Plato’s model of God in Timaeus is that “it” created the gods, who then eventually created us. Which I know, before you stop me, is a man in the sky argument. However, the point of the life giver, the creator, is a good one in the sense that as Frank Herbert writes in Dune “Something can’t come from nothing”, so something “had to be” in order to create the rest. We’re also kind of running up against the limits of our intelligence, or at least mine, in order to conceive a nothingness that producess a somethingness. And if there is a something that created things, where did this something come from? You see the problem? Neurological, it’s a blackhole of energy, entropy. You, we, can keep going in loops, but it will remain circular reasoning without an answer, and thus an energy sink and hole in our sense making capabilities. The brain likes order, it likes knowining, it likes having sense, sense making and explanations that make life predictable, because fundamentally all of that stops the loss of energy neurometabolically (entropy again, check the energy as first principle framework). So what are we going to do to stop this entropy?

Provide a narrative and model that makes sense. The brain gives a sigh of relief, we have a model that is RELATIVELY predicable that explains enough so we can go about our day without having to pull into the question the nature of the universe. This makes sense, that we need a coherent model and a cohesive narrative. It is a contributing reason why the religious fare better with their mental health, if you, beyond the shadow of a doubt, believe in God, regardless of the model or jacket it comes in, you are safeguarded from a lot of entropy and concern of what happens with you during or after your ordeal even if it includes dying, that’s a pretty strong psychological tool to have. So the point then: whether it is a “man” in the sky, a sentient being beyond our comprehension, or the driving force behind life, that is what we’re paying homage to with starting our prayer. “You” this giver of life, the measure of all of things, the driver of all things, the thing that makes all things possible, I’m honoring this/that/you in the acknowledge of the source of reality. 

An example of model top down realization to the existence of God is scientists becoming converted by seeing the intricacies of biological “design”, the intelligent design debate has proponents, and then there are those in the middle where evolution and divine direction are able to reconcible. To return to the point, Francis Collins is a strong proponent of God in biology. Even Einstein said  "The more I study science, the more I believe in God." A sentiment echoed by Werner Heisenberg "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you." More recently, Huberman came to out to say the same thing, just to give a more recent example. When we are faced with awe and wonder (explored later) inside an experience like these biological deep dives, it is possible for someone to ignite their belief in a conception of God (less man in the sky, more intelligent designer, as in Plato’s Timaeus). The argument that needs to be explored, to a certain degree, is the distribution of populations on a bell curve. Bell curve meme. 

- Sourced from Hoe Math

The idea is that you always have a few outliers that can experience this through a practice like research and contemplation, whereas others probably fall more in the middle category where an ecology of practices is needed to set the stage for a similar experience. We also need to account for that if certain people have a model that was never “animated” by emotion (attachment) these kinds of experiences can animate it. This is the bidirectionality I tried to emphasize in the ontological sense, they build and infer each other, to which degrees and in which ways, in terms of where a model update is needed and where an experience is needed, is highly individual. That’s partly why I’m trying to tackle both angles, give different models, or aspects thereof, and supply an ecology of practices. Lastly, to conclude this part, is that the overall grievance or apprehension with the “man in the sky” paradigm has less to do with the creator part, and more with the directive part. I wrote partly about the implication of attachment, another relevant implication of attachment is how your relationship with your father paints how you view the world (or reality at large). If the father was punishing, it (the world, reality, and God) also appeared to be punishing. Whereas, when the father was nurturing, so then too the perception of God is more like a benevolent and guiding force (rather than an exacting force). Given the complexity of what forms our beliefs and perceptions, attachment (in its multiple dimensions) can’t be discounted from this formula of parameters WHY some people have a hard time with their notions of God. 

Sidenote: the Timaeus has a lot more depth and a lot more to offer than this short fragment, I just took what I needed to paint a more complete picture of the Platonic model. Additionally, it is hard to attribute EXACTLY what Plato believed, seeing he offers a few different takes. And that figuring out or attributing Plato’s beliefs are not the point, but rather to garner what we can to fuel and direct our practice, which is the main intention of this framework (which I’ll keep repeating). 

Sources:
Plato Laws
Plato Timaeus
Tim Urban wait but why
Heraclitus
Science of consciousness
John Vervaeke Awakening From the Meaning Crisis 

The Gods:

I’ll level this with God. Although we could perhaps make a metaphysical distinction. There’s a rationale that looks like something like this: If we only saw a minute part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and there’s an entire realm out there of energies, in the truest quantum biological sense, then PERHAPS that’s where these energies reside, and perhaps they are sentient and conscious. When we think of a “higher” realm, perhaps it is actually higher up in the spectrum of electromagnetism so that we can’t see or hear it. So then how do experience it? Usually through sensation. That’s how most mystical, religious, and sacred experiences tend to be described. As if it is something ineffable, barely comprehensible, something so alien to our everyday experiences and conceptions, that it’s hard to describe it. So many resort to describing sensations. A big part of this is that humans have magnetoreceptors, and seeing that the heart and the brain both generate a (quantum) electromagnetic field, it can thus be influenced and interacted with by energies that are out there. Again: if the brain and heart produce an electromagnetic field, we defacto need the biological systems and capacities to deal and navigate with it, hence the magnetoreceptors and probably other biological sensory mechanisms that are embedded somewhere. So perhaps the gods are potent energies in this realm that are beyond our standard perceptive capabilities.

Socrates very often invokes the gods in his dialogues with others, as he does wth the muses. There’s another point here to be made, city states had their own patron gods. Apollo for Sparta, Athena for Athens, Zeus for crete. In point 5 of the prayer, taken from the segment, the Athenian Stranger in this dialogue of Laws talks about the ancestral gods. So rather than a seperate point, I’m relegating these to the same dimension as the gods. These patron gods and ancestral gods, the way I see it, are guiders and protectors, or perhaps we cna say that they are these aspects of the Gods to begin with. If I had to make an educated guess, I would put the Christian notion of angles in this category. These benevolent energies of this metaphysical dimensions that protect, guide, and possibly heal us (although I have no experience with the latter). Now, to be perfectly (or at the very least, relatively) concise, we could put benevolent forces of any religion here, it’s just that we’re focusing on Hellenic themes rather than anything else. To return to the point, the invoking, channeling or witnessing of forces/energies outside of us is not uncommon, What I mean specifically, is this idea of ideas having “us”, rather than us having ideas, and the common sentiment of the collective unciousness that people tap into. Steven Pressfield talks about the muse (or muses) from which he gets inspiration. People, in general, who create in Flow often feel another “presence” or feel as if their actions are guided by something else (I’m one of these). Cognition, and or sense of self, seems to be minimal, or even completely absent, and this other “thing” is doing the writing, the speaking, the painting, the what have you. Rick Rubin’s latest book, The Creative Act: A Way Of Being,is basically about this (although I admit I haven’t finished it). Even Socrates talk about it in the dialogue Ion, how the poet didn’t master poetry, rather that he was driven by the muses. The convergence is there, although we need to account for the narrativization here. By this I mean, that when in Flow, or adjacent altered states, parts of the prefrontal cortex go dark (minimize activation), to oversimplify, and our sense of self is suspended, with other regions taking over, it could “just” be an emergence of the subconscious mind taking over with a host of information that is hardly ever cognitively processed. Perhaps, it is part of the equation if we think about the channeling of the “something else”. Again, we’re not trying to solve the puzzle, I’m only trying to illustrate how this shows up, how we navigate it, and what the narratives around it are. 

The Spirits: 

In the Platonic tradition, all beings are imbued with a soul. So the spirits are usually, rather, the beings around us. To go even further, he also held the planets have souls. And if not souls, so the dialogue goes, how could we not think of them as Gods, especially the sun, when it gives life? Perhaps there is even a case to be made for the “spirit of a place” or as we would say, the vibe or energy of a place. The idea, by and large, is to open you up again to the spiritual dimension or the sensation and participatory dimension of a place. What follows from this opening up is that observing nature can give you mystical experiences, this extends the Stoic practice which also holds this view (Seneca has an entire book on it, and Chrysippus was known to write about physics extensively), additionally this practice and belief system that was very present in Ancient Japan. Although this probably could stand on its own as a framework, it fits to have it here in the necessary scope for you to understand and to engage the practice. The spirits and nature at large form a part of our “spiritual nutrition”, as such let’s explore this a little more.

“We marvel at the beauty of a sunset or the stars in the sky, but often forget to appreciate the wonders of nature’s workings."

-Seneca, Natural Questions

Connection with nature/reality is expressed in interesting ways take for example the Japanese who have 72 "seasons". Based on changes in climate and the comings and goings of animals. That's a completely different way to look at nature, and hence (probably) the emphasis on spirits in their traditional outlook. Whereas in modernity, so many of us are so disconnected we miss and/or are blind to the natural gradients of reality in the micro (days, weeks, etc). It's easy when these gradients are more pronounced in our 4 seasons. It's less obvious with the rhythm of the day behind the sunrise-sunset "microseasons" or gradient. The mornings when I was in Turkey, for instance, had their own unique "flavor". The sun feels a certain way, the fish crowd around my feet, the stillness, in a way that is in its own right a sacred space, especially if we add your suggestibility/sensitivity to this equation in the mornings and evenings at dawn and dusk (it's a brainwave thing). Which makes us more in tune and sensitive to be primed for and to focus on things the rest of the day (also setting the stage for your dopamine baseline sensitivity and responsiveness). 

A disconnect from nature is a disconnect from reality, it's a narrowing of the spectrum of the arena, which typically leads to a narrowing of the spectrum of the agent. It feeds into and contributes to one-dimensional and binary modes of being. You experience less granularity in the Self and your states, "you" become reduced. Richness makes way for rigidity. Is it any surprise we lose connection with the sacred and the divine, when we turn blind to the ebb and flow of nature around us? When instead some beg for the predictability of the artificial monotone? Modern life is real, but highly incomplete in its connection to reality. This disconnect partly takes with it the natural spiritual sense we're born with. It ceases to get fed the symbolism and natural flow it takes as sustenance. I hold that most are spirituality starved, not just because of lack of a useful model for the concept of divinity, but also because there's this reduced contact with nature and the honoring thereof. We've ceased to honor the very things that provide life, whether it is the Sun, the Moon, the oceans, or the mountains. That connection is not nurtured through the occasional getaway into nature, but rather through our daily rituals, tributes, offerings, and prayers. It's no surprise so many feel better being able to witness the sunrise and sunset daily, even if all else stays equal. 

Let’s explore the Stoic conception deeper: 

For example, let us consider this passage from one of Seneca’s letters to Luciusm taken from Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy As A Way Of Life: “As for me, I usually spend a great deal of time in the contemplation of wisdom. I look at it with the same stupefaction with which, on other occasions, I look at the world; this world that I quite often feel as though I were seeing for the first time.” If Seneca speaks of stupefaction, it is because he sometimes finds that he discovers the world all of a sudden, “as though he were seeing it for the first time.” At such moments he becomes conscious of the transformation taking place in his perception of the world. Now all of a sudden he is stupefied, because he sees the world with new (fresh) eyes.” This is highly illustrative of the point we’re exploring. Awe for nature, and the spirits within it. The theme is present in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, as it would be when it is a central theme in Stoicism at large. There was an immense respect and honor for Nature, and how that factored into the spiritual and religious dimension of Stoicism. 

Practice 1: watch the “spirits”

Practice 2: Pay attention every day to the micro seasons 

Practice 3: contemplate nature and its natural workings 

Practice 4: Incorporating more nature and living according to nature in your daily life (pro tip: start with watching the sunrise and sunset). 

Heroes:

This section can’t be handled with much tact: we don’t have many modern-day heroes, I’d like to point out they do exist but that they've been demonized, vilified, censored, and hung out to dry. The greatness of today, in the West at large, has been hamstrung by regimes and bureaucracy alike. Additionally, the “field of battle” has changed from a physical warfront to a spiritual, social, and economic warfront. So we should account for this, and the fact that there have been countless unsung heroes, which will take some personal exploration to uncover. Regardless, Classical Greek Literature is littered with them, and obviously it doesn’t end there. The great men of times long past: Achilles, Hercules, Odysseus, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Augustus, Solon, Lycurgus, and so forth. 

We’re borrowing heavily from the themes Dostoevesky wrote about in Crime and Punishment, and Notes From The Underground (spoilers, sort of). Why even mention it? Because in the books the protagonist believed these men were above the law, or rather, that what they did would be justified and then celebrated in the annals of time. Whereas a regular person would be prosecuted if they tried to do the same. Now, it goes way beyond law, crime or punishment. Plenty of rich people have gotten away with crimes, very few people would claim these to be great people. So obviously wealth isn’t the determining factor for greatness, and thus neither is the ability to get away with crime. Greatness, in a way, is the embodiment of an Ideal, and a certain virtue (or perhaps all virtues). In Ayn Rand's books this theme is strongly present, there are great men there, pricsiely because of their Idealism and virtue (courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, check the framework on the Ontology of Virtue). It’s about HOW and WHY things are done, rather than what is done. When someone, despite the pressures, remains unyielding, unflappable, uncompromising, and unrelenting, in their embodiment and orientation of virtue. I would argue that the aforemention traits are what feeds into greatness. 

"Heroes have an incorruptible taste for the truth. A compulsion to "stand upon things, and not shows of things. They won't let the consensus, the experts, or the stale habits trap them inside convenient lies. The greats lead theological lives. They intuitively grasp the "Divine Significance Of Life." And they want to “speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this."

- Carlyle 

Practice 1: Read biographies of Great men and Heroes (podcast episodes also possible)

Practice 2: Find out if there are any great men in your own lineage 

Practice 3: Pick a few of them and find out everything you can about them

Practice 4: Solidify the lens of these heroes by asking yourself what they would do in your situation

Practice 5: Honor them in your prayers each day (potentially get a bust or token of them)

Sources:
Ayn Rand
Dostoevsky
Plato
Homer
Carlyle 

Ancestors: 

The following is a part of a speech that Socrates recounts of a great orator and teacher of oration in ancient Greece that he supposedly heard (we don’t know for a fact, but that’s not important for our purposes). What is important is the speech itself, and how it relates to our ancestors and what “they” wanted from their descendants. The pattern I notice is that “we” (contemporary Westerners) have very little of it left. When it came from our own history, lest we forget that this wasn’t just a Hellenic practice and that a lot of Platonism made it into Christianity. The point I’m trying to illustrate is that very few of us honor our ancestors, their sacrifices, and their philosophy. That’s why it is in this framework, because it is part of our spiritual life to acknowledge the past, and that we’re building (and can only ever build) on what was there before. How you confer honor to your ancestors matters less than the practice in itself. The biology and neurobiology of it is relatively straightforward: up until the moment of your conception all the experiences of your parents are wired into your DNA, and so is the blueprint to make your neurology. Now keep doing this division and mapping of experience throughout your entire ancestral line. Remember that DNA is the carrier of information, experiences and developments are information. Thus, a lot more than we generally figure is still present in our DNA. You might not be able to access it all, most likely for good reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not all there. So whether you’re cognizant of it or not, you’re carrying your entire ancestral line with you in your DNA. If that’s not something worth honoring, then we’ve really lost the plot. 

“Sons, the present circumstance itself reveals that you are sprung from brave fathers. Free to live ignobly, we prefer to die nobly rather than subject you and your descendants to reproach and bring disgrace on our fathers and all our ancestors. We consider the life of one who has brought disgrace on his own family no life, and we think that no one, human being or god, is his friend, either on the earth or beneath it after his death. Therefore you must remember what we say and do whatever you do to the accompaniment of valor, knowing that without it all passions and all ways of life are shameful and base. For neither does wealth confer distinction on one who posses it with cowardice (the riches of a man like that belong to another, not himself) nor do bodily beauty and strength, when they reside in a worthless and cowardly man, seem to suit him. On the contrary, they seem out of character; they show up the one who has them for what he is and reveal his cowardice. Moreover, all knowledge cut off from rectitude and the rest of virtue has the look of low cunning, not wisdom. For these reasons, make it your business from the beginning to end to do your absolute utmost always in every way to surpass us and our ancestors in glory. If you do not, be sure that we excel you in valor, our victory, as we see it, brings us shame, but if we are excelled by you, our defeat brings happiness. And the surest way to bring about our defeat and your victory would be if you would prepare yourselves not to abuse and waste the good repute of your ancestors, because you are aware that for a man with self-respect nothing is more disgraceful than to make himself honored through himself, but through his ancestor’s glory. Honors that come from ancestors are a noble and magnificent treasure for their descendants, but it is shameful and unmanly to enjoy the use of a treasure of wealth and honors and fail to hand it on to the following generation because of a lack of acquisitions and public recognitions on one’s own part. And if you will live as we advise you to live, you will come to us as friends to friends, when your destiny conveys you here; but if you neglected our advice and behaved as cowards, no one will welcome you. So ends what is to be reported to our sons.”

-Plato, Menexenus 

Practice 1: Confer honors to your ancestors (memorials, quality time, prayers, offerings, etc)
Practice 2: Map your ancestral tree
Practice 3: Highlight and discover the positive traits of your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents 

Practice 4: Do a DNA heritage test 

Practice 5: Keep them in your prayers and have tokens/mementos of them

NEUROLOGY OF MYSTICAL AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES

As usual, let’s start with the basics of how the brain works and how this infers the degree and probability of these altered states that tend to come with these mystical, sacred, and religious experiences. 

Here's what happens inside your brain under prolonged stress:

• Reduction of resources, 

• Vasoconstriction 

• Neurotransmitter alteration, 

• Sympathetic Nervous system dominance, 

• Brain volume reduction, 

• Brain function dysregulation, 

• Gene alteration

Let's start with the first level before we look at anything else: If your brain isn't getting what it needs, it's going to "revolt" or at least signal that something is off. What are the main ones?

• Oxygen deprivation 

• Dehydration 

• Nutrient deprivation and depletion 

• Overstimulation 

• Sleep deprivation 

• Toxic burden.

All of which need to be assessed and addressed first. Because the more all of these are present the more inflammation and stress the brain will experience. 

What then happens when the brain is stressed and inflamed?  Vasoconstriction is the constricting of blood vessels, which of course reduces our resource flow. There's also a case to be made that eventually the blood vessel's strength and plasticity fade, leading to more fragile blood vessels. Furthermore, both the resource flow for neurotransmitters, their generation (synthesis) in the cell and their reuptake will be strongly impacted, alongside the signaling (flow and communication across the brain). Very often the balance shifts to a major higher ratio of glutamate which is excitatory, which means that people get wired, it becomes more difficult to inhibit certain impulses, it becomes harder to maintain certain behaviors, and you rarely feel at ease or peaceful. 

This shift in neurotransmitters then changes the opponent processing of the nervous system branches that deal with excitation and inhibition. That is the sympathetic nervous system is going to be overact, the part of the NS that deals with arousal (excitation) and parasympathetic nervous system is going to be blunted. Further impacting brain function and state, and organ function and state. Which of course also impacts things like sleep and digestion for which we need a primarily parasympathetic state. A direct effect of chronic stress and inflammation is that brain regions start being negatively impacted. The hippocampus, the brain region responsible for memory is going to experience shrinking. The Prefrontal cortex (PFC) will also experience reduced resource flow and blood vessel constriction, effectively reducing executive function (logic, reasoning, strategy, and problem-solving). The amygdala will get enlarged, responding to stressors and perceived threats in an amplified reactive way.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is going to alter its function. More glucocorticoids (stress hormones) are going to be produced, it will become more stress responsive as its threshold lowers, and its baseline of stress hormone production will also heighten (thus constantly pumping out more stress hormones), with both of these stress resilience will drop. There's also a stress axis connecting the brain with the gonads (for men), which is why libido is one of the first things to go under stress. Energy and resources are needed elsewhere, and that is outside of stress catabolizing cholesterol (the building block for sex hormones) to fuel cortisol and adrenaline pumping. All of this greatly impacts the ability of signals to travel a neuronal pathway. The more inflammation is present, the more noise we have on the "cable", as a neuronal pathway is not just chemical, but also electric and magnetic. The more our neurotransmitters are impacted, the weaker our signals become. Another impact on the neural circuitry is the decay of the myelin sheet, a sheet that wraps around the neural pathway to "insulate" the pathway so that it reduces signal loss (as the insulation around electrical wiring does).

The brain then starts to regularly "misfire", unable to sense or find the signal in the noise, signal getting lost through the weakening of the wires, and distorted information making it to the receiver. It follows the principle of "garbage in, garbage out", when the receiver (receptors/synapse/neuron) gets information that is "garbage" it's going to carry on this distorted information to the next one (and so forth), which then bleeds into our behavior.  The longer this goes on, the more this input will make it into the neuron which will start altering the genes inside of it so that the neuron function and synaptic function starts changing. Reducing receptors in some cases, reducing production in some cases, reducing reuptake in other cases, and the opposite process for other hormones and neurotransmitters. This then sets the stage for a negative feedback loop and a negative cascade, with every level being impacted from brain regions, brain circuits, hormones, and neurotransmitters, to genes.

In other words: if your brain isn’t working properly = spiritual access denied. 

Then there are specific relationships and correlations in biology and neurology that dictate access, probability, and degree of these altered states. Now, it’s important to emphasize that the information presented is neither exhaustive nor absolute and that there are factors we still don’t know of, rather the information is supposed to serve as a model of constraints and requirements for how these experiences take place. I strongly believe many of these can be improved based on the effects that our health practices have on the brain that reverses (sometimes entirely) the damage done from various angles. Again, let’s consult the bell curve, there are some, of these outliers, that even in the most deplorable, horrible circumstances, and with disadvantageous neurology, have mystical experiences and maintain a connection to the metaphysical, or God in their own conception. Which is interesting but not something we want to rely on. As in, we want to rely on the systems and setups that get us to these experiences, and not luck alone. 

1. Genes influences in religious inclinations

The relationship between the D4 Dopamine Receptor gene (DRD4) and the emotion of awe. Now, this gene also seems to modulate for novelty, so how novelty and awe come together is still a bit of a question, but you’re not here for a mechanistic exploration of genes. The basic understanding will suffice to get what you need. “Simply” it is that genes also play a role in your susceptibility to awe. The oversimplified way this works is this: this gene variant makes you more sensitive to dopamine, perhaps even producing more or altering the reuptake to make it linger longer, either way, it makes dopamine a more dominant factor in your neurology, which then “paints” or “colors” your perception of reality. What could be mundane, boring, and unstimulating could invoke strong feelings in you. 

There are genetic influences in conservatism and authoritarianism that have religiousness implications. Now, this isn’t a smoking gun, and we’re not making an earth-shattering discovery, it’s rather that there is a correlation between these attitudes and a gene “set” or “complex” that passes these attitudes to the next generation. The point, to reiterate, is to explore dispositions, inclinations, and sensitivities to these religious, mystical, and sacred experiences. Someone who has a genetic tendency towards these is obviously more inclined to experience these, all else being equal. A very important point, that they mention in these studies on Genetic Environmental Influences On Religiousness, is that a host of attitudes are “stored” in your genes and psyche, and so it takes the right environmental triggers to activate these, one of which (the strongest one by far) is having children. To be precise, it did seem to foster more connection to religion, or signing up and going to church, and a shift towards conservatism and authoritarianism. Another factor is age in general, I quote “ These results support the conclusion stated previously that age moderates the heritability of religiousness, as it does in the Eaves et Al (1997) study of conservatism.” They also found that the genetic tendency towards internal religiousness was stronger (prayer, religious values) than external religiousness like actually going to church. This, of course, points to what we explored that your spiritual sense and inclination is about your connection to the sacred, religious, mystical, and divine, rather than reliance on external institutions. 

This paper Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Traditional Moral Values Triad - Authoritarianism, Conservatism And Religiousness- As Assessed By Quantitative Behavior Genetic Methods also mentions the book The God Gene, where Dean Hamer states “Individual genes account for only a tiny fraction of the variation in a trait. The gene he discusses, VMAT2, may be important in influencing the kinds of traits we are discussing, as their products modulate mechanisms through which psychoactive drugs work on the central nervous system.” It’s obvious that A) There are significant genetic influences that play a role, B) That these influences are complex and not found in a single gene, C) Epigenetic alterations play a strong role in what occurs in your dispositions towards religiousness and experiences thereof, D) The two most significant environmental factors in these dispositions are age and having children, E) As my own addition a profound experience can (and usually does) form the catalyst for a deep religious or spiritual sense, which would obviously modulate epigenetics and genetics. So, if the brain is in a good state, you’re in your late twenties and beyond, and you have a child (or children), there’s more probability of experiencing these religious, mystical, and sacred experiences. 

Sources: 

https://www.proquest.com/docview/2136365861

https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2024/03/04/the-science-of-awe/

http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/pdf/GeneticEnvironmentalInfluencesReligiousness2006.pdf

2.The neuropsychobiology of religious, spiritual and mystical experiences. 

Based on two papers "Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion" edited by Patrick McNamara and "The Neuroscience of Awe and Transcendent Experience" by David Yaden et al. Both of these papers don’t go into the mechanisms that deeply (or barely) and are expanded by a third one: Neuroscience of Religion by Uffe Schjoedt & Michiel van Elk. So here we’ll explore the effects of awe and further mechanisms. To answer an important question about brain functionality and the brain just “tricking us” in terms of mystical experiences, let’s explore this paragraph below: 

“Additionally, we’ll need to talk about the relationship between mysticism and neurobiology as it is expressed in Where God and Science Meet, by Patrick McNamara. One of the articles in this volume addresses neuroimaging studies performed on a number of self-defined religious and non-religious persons. The results of this study indicate two possible conclusions. The first conclusion suggests that Christian religious experience is a cognitively structured phenomenon, meaning that the brain acts as a mediator between what is real and what is perceived. In the case of mystical experience, it would mean that the brain processes the presence of God in a way that becomes understandable to a human being. The other possible conclusion of this study, however, indicates that religious experience may be marked by dysfunctional brain activity involving limbic structures. The limbic structures are the parts of the brain that process emotions and other primitive functions. According to this explanation, the people who experience mystical encounters with the divine are cognitively damaged, and the intensely emotional experiences are nothing more than misfires in the nerve cells that comprise their limbic systems. Another study, described in We Are Our Brains, by D. F. Swaab, offers an explanation that might put to rest the conflict between these two theories of mystical experience. The EEGs of Carmelite nuns showed marked changes during mystical experiences when they felt that they were at one with God. These changes were consistent and proven across the EEGs of numerous nuns, decreasing the likelihood that mere dysfunction was to blame. Additionally, similar studies, examined in Where God and Science Meet, prove changes in the brains of Buddhist monks working toward meditation that are consistent with the results of the Carmelite nun study. Thus, similar changes have occurred across different faith traditions. It is unreasonable to assume that every person who practices achieving mystical experience, however, that is defined across faith traditions, must be cognitively damaged to the point of misinterpreting and misunderstanding these highly emotional experiences as an experience of the Divine.” 

Clearly it’s not a malfunctioning brain, neurology, or systemic issue. Just as SOME epileptics have mystical experiences, not ALL epileptics have them, we have to ring the bell-curve bell, and then account for who of these had models and have had these experiences pre-epilepsy. But again, we don’t want to build an entire argument or exploration solely on this population or we will lose the plot. When people who perform similar or the same practices, have similar or the same brain developments, and similar or the same experiences, then we have a high level of convergence. Meditation is a primer, it puts you in a space and a state, how this is done matters less than the effect it has on the brain. This is why different forms of meditations are useful, as we would preferably account for bio-individuality and what one responds to, the state they find themselves in, their environment, and the overall neurological deficit. We could, and in this case should, make the same case for any practice one would endeavor into, whether it is prayer or something, the effect will depend on the aforementioned factors (and a host of other factors, whether internal or external). Let’s continue.

“The above-mentioned studies were conducted using a number of different methods to evoke mystical encounters with the divine. Some of these were meditation on a religious scripture, an intense focus on a piece of art or a specific prayer, or a complete clearing of the mind of all errant thoughts. Scripture and art were used in these studies as ways of coming into an encounter with God or the divine. Consequently, although this was not the intention, the study’s method established that beauty and art are a bridge to religious experience! If art and beauty are so powerful that they can lead someone into a deep and meaningful religious encounter, then they should be regarded as religious experience. True beauty can open the mind and soften the heart to a mystical encounter. Beauty is that powerful – that it can lead to a lasting impression of the presence of God.”

Let’s skip to their conclusion:

“Finally, it is important to address the question of how we can foster these lasting and transformative experiences of beauty. Spending time in nature, meditating, and focusing on art and things that may be considered objectively beautiful are all paths to potentially transformative encounters with beauty.”

Taken from Neurotheology: The Neurobiology of Religious Experience by Stacee Smith. The practice is outlined below, which we will explore, though I’m sure the point is clearly made here. Although there is room to explore why beauty does this. Primarily, but not exclusively, through dopamine. 

The visual system responds very strongly with dopamine, due to its dopaminergic circuitry. I don’t think any guy needs to be told this, as it is evident what happens when they see a beautiful woman. Furthermore, it’s partly why we find social media apps stimulating and or addicting because they keep prompting the dopaminergic systems. Here is a crucial point I feel is warranted: this is obviously easy to abuse, which tends to lead to strong somatic prediction errors. The logic of it, in terms of abuse I don’t need to highlight, but rather the somatic prediction error I will highlight is that in the past when you saw something you were present. Ergo, you were directly involved in terms of presence. This is not the case with screens and media, you are not actually present, or involved in the situation. This makes these systems of reward and mood in the brain believe that you are, and try to reward you this way without a behavior being present. However because a behavior is not present, the level of reward and reinforcement is different. This can easily be proven with an example (there are many of course, this is just to illustrate). Let’s say you’ve been an avid practitioner of bouldering and you’ve been stuck on a route, unable to solve this problem. You try and you try, you fail and you fail. At some point, your trial and error pay off, you stick the jump, and nail the route: BANG, massive dopamine release (and probably some endorphins), relief, pride, joy, pleasure “Holy shit! I did it!”. Now contrast this to someone else solving this problem and you watching them. You might get a slight buzz, but YOU didn’t do anything. This principle, somatic prediction error, has important implications in the case of movies as well as being stimulated by the hero’s journey and everything that comes with it, but without any depth of wiring and prompting that leads to action in your own life. This detour was just to illustrate and highlight the importance of the practice and participation. Let’s move on.  

“Other studies suggest that wiser people may also experience more awe, and one’s tendency to  experience awe is correlated with a number of other positive character traits, such as appreciation of beauty, creativity, and gratitude.”

A bit of a chicken and an egg situation, does wisdom provide the tendency for awe? Or does your tendency for awe contribute strongly to developing wisdom? Not necessarily a conundrum we’re aiming to solve right here, nor explore at depth. What does matter, for the sake of our exploration, are these positive character traits. Because this is strongly indicative of these neurobiological predispositions toward these experiences. Which is the point we’re exploring in this part of the framework. Again, there is always bidirectionality and reenforcement present. However, if we look at the earlier stages in the line of consequences, when you come from parents who have this, your genetic predisposition is already present (or at least is highly likely to be present). If then gets reinforced, potentially during your natal phase, and subsequently throughout your entire childhood, then you’d most probably have a much easier time connecting to all of these traits and the internal dopamine-mediated rewards. Seems logical, right? Onwards, my curious skeptic! 

“In their paper, Keltner and Haidt note that the word “awe” is derived from words in Old English and Old Norse that expressed “fear and dread, particularly toward a divine being.” The English meaning evolved into “dread mingled with veneration, reverential or respectful fear; and the attitude of a mind subdued to profound reverence in the presence of supreme authority, moral greatness or sublimity, or mysterious sacredness.”

Let’s pause and take this in. In many of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates speaks with awe, reverence, and respect for the gods. And, in his conceptions, how could he not when something is so pure and perfect? When this takes place, across the world, regardless of time and culture, then it deserves some credence, and if not credence, at the very least serious consideration. Now, of course, when “everyone” has these practices and experiences similar experiences with the mystical and the divine, you’d probably have a large consensus on this awe. However, important to point out, that even in the Hellenic age there were atheists. In Plato’s Laws, book 10, an entire part of the dialogue takes place about this, at depth and length, through the interlocutor the “Athenian Stranger” (it’s not a Socratic dialogue, just to be autistically clear). To get back to the point, if, or when, there is something so supreme, ideal, and perfect beyond our mortal constraints, then awe is quick to follow. 

The question we have yet to explore is how awe changes you, whether partially or in totality, and the answer is found in the same paper.

“Essentially, any stimulus that exceeds a person’s normal range of experience in one attribute or another could lead to the perception of vastness, as can stimuli that lead people to feel as if they are part of something larger than themselves. Accommodation, according to Keltner and Haidt, refers to psychologist Jean Piaget’s “process of adjusting mental structures that cannot assimilate a new experience.”

In other words, your conception of the world needs to shift or expand in order to make sense of this new experience. 

The “need for accommodation” feature of awe explains why we find these experiences so mind-blowing: Awe experiences actually prompt us to question and try to revise our understanding of the world.” 

Flavors of awe:
Keltner and Haidt propose the following explanations of these awe flavors:
Threat-based awe is likely accompanied by fear; stimuli that may elicit threat-based awe include a charismatic leader like Hitler or an extreme weather event like an electrical storm.
Beauty-based awe is flavored with “aesthetic pleasure” and may be elicited by a person, a natural  scene (e.g., the Grand Canyon), or a work of art (e.g., Monet’s Water Lilies).
Ability-based awe is thought to co-occur with admiration of a person’s “exceptional ability, talent, and skill.” Examples include seeing an especially talented musician or stellar athlete.
Virtue-based awe—the awe one feels when in the presence of someone displaying virtue and strength of character—would likely be accompanied by feelings of elevation. An example of virtue-based awe might be reading about the lives of saints.
Supernatural causality-based awe—as one might experience if they saw an angel, a ghost, or a floating object—will be tinted with an “element of the uncanny,” which can be terrifying or glorious depending on the source. 

“Okay, Okay, I get the gist” You might say. “But HOW does awe express itself biologically then? Beyond the “mere” scope of psychology” I gotta give it to this Curious Skeptic, he is a smart guy. Let’s return to the study to see one of the mechanisms that highlights this change. 

“The first part of the study found that, out of seven positive emotions studied, dispositional awe was the only emotion that was significantly negatively associated with levels of interleukin-6  (IL-6), a “proinflammatory cytokine” and marker of inflammation. High levels of proinflammatory cytokines have been linked to a number of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression. A second part of the study found that participants who reported feeling more “awe, wonder, and amazement that day” had lower levels of IL-6; this association remained even after controlling for dispositional awe and openness to experience, suggesting that it isn’t just people who are prone to experiencing awe frequently who may have decreased inflammation following a particularly awe-filled day” 

This fits in neatly with the brain basics I opened this chapter with. And then feeds into why I wrote this entire thing in the first place. We can’t take neurobiology out of psychology, and neither can we take out of spirituality and religiousness. A brain that is highly inflamed is going to suffer in its connection to the divine, ESPECIALLY when no prior connection was established. I really don’t think there is a way around this point. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these spiritual exercises, and the practices I outline, lower inflammation (not all of them, but a lot of them). The negative feedback loop of systemic inflammation, gut inflammation, and neuroinflammation, wrecks your ability to connect and feel the parameters that go into mystical, religious, spiritual, and sacred experiences. Even getting to Flow is made more challenging the more inflammation is in a brain. A healthy person experiences these things at a much higher rate, even without a practice. 

“Because the theorized function of awe is to increase systematic, accommodative processing, we hypothesized that awe should lead to more careful scrutiny of persuasive messages,” write Vladas Griskevicius and colleagues in one study. In particular, this study found that when people were induced to feel awe, they were less persuaded by weak arguments than were people who did a control activity (imagining doing their laundry). This was in contrast to the effect of some other positive emotions; people induced to feel anticipatory enthusiasm or amusement, for example, were more persuaded by weak arguments (Griskevicius et al., 2010)”

I’d argue that’s pretty important, this capacity to be less persuaded by weak arguments. So then awe, in connection to faith, spirituality, and religousness is a bulwark against the bullshit that is perpetuated, I would say in modernity, but even back in ancient times. So the multidimensional or multilayered buffer against all sorts of negative, invasive, or parasitic ideologies is found in these experiences and practices. This is very significant because it implies something profound, that it is the remedy and prevention against nihilism and all of its derivative variants that are harder to spot or disguised well. When these experiences are wired into you and have become part of your being, and someone tries to sell you some bullshit “good sounding” rhetoric, no matter how elegant, it wouldn’t match the reality of your experiences. Ergo, it’s easy (or easier) to withstand the psyops, brainwashing, and parasitization of values and or beliefs. This is a component of keeping psychological cohesion, matching inner reality with external reality, and how and why some people can keep shrugging off the effects of an “upside down” reality that is imposed by an authoritative institution, wherever it comes from, regardless of the historical period we’d look into, people chose to stick with their faith over certain death, and have chosen death over conversion, going against the truth, and renouncing their values, faith, and virtues. This rarely happens, if ever, if there is no attachment or experience to enliven the cognitive model. 

“Van Cappellen et al. (2016) administered intranasal oxytocin and placebo in a sample of males (n=83), and found that oxytocin increased self-reported spirituality. However, a pre-registered study (n=116) by Cortes et al (2018), which used a conceptually similar design, failed to replicate this finding. Interestingly, Cortes et al., who used sensory deprivation to facilitate treatment induced  spiritual experiences, did observe, in an exploratory analysis, an interaction between oxytocin and  absorption: oxytocin enhanced spiritual experiences in participants with low absorption scores, but  dampened spiritual experiences in participants with high absorption scores.”

This primarily makes sense out of the attachment angle, what are the neurotransmitters of attachment? Oxytocin and vasopressin. So there HAS to be an oxytocin link and oxytocinergic connections and responses to spirituality, as per my point: you don’t connect to something you can’t feel. We have explored this from various angles, but it really needs to be hammered home. Simply: do your practices, for the love of all that is divine, because I can keep writing supportive arguments, and I will to close this off, but I’d rather just have you start setting the stage to experience these altered states and the enlivenment of any model. Onward to the last exploration, so bear with me.

“Miller et al. (2014) measured cortical thickness in high and low-risk groups of depression  (n=103) to see if individual religiosity or spirituality could bolster against the detrimental effects of depression. In line with their predictions, self-reported importance of religion and spirituality was indeed associated with thicker cortices in several areas of the brain.”

Let’s add another one to it so we can set the stage for the “closing argument”.

“Schjoedt et al. (2008) showed that both formalized and improvised prayers in Danish  Christians (n=20) activated the striatal reward system compared with secular control conditions,  suggesting that praying may stimulate the dopaminergic system. In a related study, Schjoedt et al. (2009) showed that personal prayer recruit areas associated with social cognition, suggesting that praying to God may be comparable to normal interpersonal interaction. This latter finding was later  replicated in a study by Neubauer (2014) who also used fMRI to examine similar prayers and control  conditions in an American Christian sample.” 

We’ve explored different layers of protection that faith and religiousness offer. The “mood” dimension is a huge factor. John Vervaeke makes this case very eloquently in Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, that this slide into nihilism is partly because there is nothing to anchor in, or attach to, a lot of people have become untethered, they are “naked in the storm” without a strong model and visceral (and embodied) sense of spirituality or religiousness. Which drives fear, depression, and anxiety. They get drowned in their “what ifs” about death and God, and they’re more easily pursued by weak arguments, you see how it makes their minds and spirits ripe to be parasitized by anything else that fills that void. I wasn’t joking about spirituality or religiousness being akin to nutrition. A starving man will eat basically anything, right? It’s not very different in this case, a spiritually starving man will eat what is available, even when it’s rotten to the core.

Lastly, which is the case I’ve been trying to make at depth, attachment goes in three directions: self, other, and reality at large (hint: this last dimension is where God would reside). As such, if everything is relational, it should come as no surprise that “praying to God may be comparable to normal interpersonal interaction.” Because, well, IT IS, meaning that neurologically it is experienced as such. When this dimension is represented as an identity, then we have the basis of an interpersonal relationship, you and this “thing beyond you”. Your dopamine systems wire into your attachment systems (so do other reward systems btw, like the endogenous opioid system which houses endorphins). How else can we be made to feel good in our attachments? No attachment, no reward, and thus, no reward, no attachment. They’re inseparable, and provide the neurobiological basis for this metaphysical and spiritual dimension to be represented, experienced, and treated as a relationship. This gives those biblical quotes about never walking alone a bit more depth and reinforces this idea that you are never on your own, but rather that, for the outlined reasons at the start of this section, you lose connection to that relationship and the benefits it offers. And thus why to take care of your health, and physical dimensions, is to take care of your spiritual health and the metaphysical dimension, they are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. 

Let’s try to wrap this up in a neat little bow.

If your brain is cooked, your ability and capacity to experience anything “otherwordly”, spiritual, mystical, religious, sacred, and/or divine are HIGHLY impaired. The more layers and dimensions are affected the more pronounced this effect is because this brain “injury” is a negative cascade. Receptors being covered, reduced, perhaps even destroyed, the reward being diminished, reward synthesis being lowered, attachment neurotransmitters being decreased and “blocked” from binding, access to areas being “lost”, and reduced communication and connectivity. You get the point. Hence, to take care of your health is to take care of your brain, is to be able to open up to God and the entire scope of the metaphysical dimension and whatever it brings you. 

Perhaps there is a case to be made for a ramp of some sort to experience more awe, cascading all the way into spirituality and religiousness. 

Practice 1: Beauty and art of the self (elaboration to follow in the aspirational self framework)
Practice 2: Beauty and art at home
Practice 3: Beauty and art in your immediate environment
Practice 4: Express creativity
Practice 5: Gratitude practice
Practice 6: virtue based awe: reading bios and works from mystics, saints, philosophers
Practice 7: skill/ability-based awe: look at and be immersed in environments and shows of craftsmanship

Sources: 

Grimhood

SPIRITUAL EXERCISES

Why use that term at all? Don’t worry, I won’t pull out the Curious Skeptic and Platonic Mystagogue for this. Ever since I read Pierre Hadot’s Philosophy As A Way Of Life I had been mindblown, hooked, and “converted”. Without going into details, my philosophical and spiritual journey has taken me from Eastern philosophy and mysticism through Alan Watts, to Stoicism, then Pierre Hadot, and then taking the plunge into Platonism by reading all of Plato’s works (took me 2 years with long breaks in between to finish the complete works). This journey, and the “density” it took on lately, is partly why I want to write about all of it. I’ve been coaching for 14 years, I’ve unknowingly been bringing these spiritual exercises to clients, which was the insight provided by Pierre Hadot when I first read his books. It’s an endless work in a way, at the current time of writing is I am working my way through the complete works of Dostoevsky, which will be followed by Nietzsche and then Kierkegaard. All of whom, in one way or another, have been influenced by Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Stoic thought, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. So in order to gain a deeper understanding, I’m working my way through the Hellenic source literature, which I will revisit through Aristotle, Plutarch, Plotinus, and others, to enlarge the scope of this spiritual dimension. 

I haven’t answered why I’ve stuck to Pierre Hadot’s term, so let’s allow him to explain it to us instead.

“Their goal is a kind of a self-formation, or paideia, which is to teach us to live, not in conformity with human prejudices and social conventions - for social life itself is a product of the passions - but in conformity with the nature of man, which is none other than reason. Each in its own way, all schools believed in the freedom of the will, thanks to which man has the possibility to modify, improve, and realize himself. Underlying this conviction is the parallelism between physical and spiritual exercises: just as, by dint of repeated physical exercises, athletes give new form and strength to their bodies, so the philosopher develops his strength of soul, modifies his inner climate, transforms his vision of the world, and, finally, his entire being. The analogy seems all the more self-evident in the gymnasion, the place where physical exercises were practiced was the same place where philosophy lessons were given, in other words, it was also the place for training in spiritual gymnastics.”

And additionally.

“The word spiritual is quite apt to make us understand that these exercises are the result, not merely of thought, but of the individual’s entire psychism.” 

It is this, Metanoia (which I have tattooed on my arm) that we’re looking for, a spiritual conversion, a total transformation of the Self. So we are entirely transformed, which is of course the basis for writing this entire thing (and the subsequent and interconnecting frameworks). The exercises, or rather, all the practices listed in this framework, serve as the gym to develop this strength of soul.

“Hence we being with a fundamental existential choice on behalf of a style of life that consists of certain practices, activities, and conduct that are precisely what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises.” This style of life is given concrete form, either in the order of inner discourse and of spiritual activity: meditation, dialogue with oneself, examination of conscience, exercises of the imagination, such as the view from above on the cosmos or the earth, or in the order of action and of daily behavior, like the mastery of oneself, indifference towards indifferent things, the fulfillment of duties of social life in Stoicism, the discipline of desires in Epicureanism.”

This style of life is highly philosophical, clearly, as it represents what it used to mean back in ancient times, your way of life, lifestyle, that held these practices. We’re coming full circle where philosophy is made whole by being reintegrated with spirituality and religiousness. So let’s explore these spiritual exercises a bit more, with some elaborations. Now, I can’t give such an elaboration that it fits everyone, or is exactly what every person reading this needs or hopes to find, there is too much bio-individual expression for how they manifest. Regardless, I, or rather the ancients, intend to provide the blueprint and framework that’s more easily amenable to your needs.  

For the sake of clarity, here is the re-list of the Spiritual exercises:
1. Research (zetesis), think self-study 
2. Thorough investigation (skepsis), analyzing points, perspectives, positions, etc
3. Reading (anagnosis)
4. Listening (akroasis)
5. Attention (proshe),
6. Self-mastery (enkratia) / Therapies of the passions (revisit self-regulation framework)
7. Meditations (meletai) The definition here is: “Of first importance is meditation, which is the exercise of reason; moreover the two words are synonymous from an etymological point of view. Unlike the Buddhist meditation practices of the Far East, Greco-Roman philosophical meditation is not linked to a corporeal attitude but it is a purely rational, imaginative, or intuitive exercise that can take extremely varied forms. “ as quoted from Pierre Hadot
8. Indifference to indifferent things (Ta Erotika framework)
9. Imagination exercises (View from above, outlined below) 
10. Examination of conscience (journaling framework) 
11. Discourse/Dialogue (inner dialogue, narrative framework) 
12. Prayer (Blueprint above, or the standard practices per religion) 
13. Aspirational Self (the process of becoming the aspirational self and moving towards an ideal, framework WIP) 
14. Exercise and movement (obvious, no? Given that, almost all philosophers advise going on a walk. Check the Strength training as Self acutalization framework for further expansion.)
15. Spectator Novus 
16. Meditations “of the eastern kind” (Meditation and breathwork framework) 

Let’s then expand the practices:

1. Research & Study

Whatever is generative, interesting, resonating, captivating, and salient to you. A part of the irony is that it doesn’t need to be directly related to anything spiritual. As was evident in some scientists having awe-filled moments in their research and discovery. 

2. Thorough investigation

Let’s take this framework as an investigation, I’ve read a lot, and had to read a lot, contemplate, deliberate, play out certain points, explore arguments, etc. This has kept me mentally preoccupied for the better part of almost two months, I’d keep returning to this framework and the points, and back to the literature and potential angles I missed or felt were warranted to include. Taking the time and the space to do so, whether this makes it into written form or not, is a crucial element in relevance realization and insight. 

3. Reading

Relatively self-explanatory, though again it is highly tied to what is generative. Following your interests, especially as an autodidact or someone with that tendency, will lead you to interesting literature. The right book hits you like a gift from the heavens, and reading it in and of itself is a spiritual experience, for me, this is the case with Plato, Pierre Hadot, and Ayn Rand. It’s hard to say with it will be for you, though if we revisit what generates awe, if/when a book is masterfully written, as it is the art of the written word, then reading those works has a high probability of providing an experience. Very few modern writers write that well, and many more have been hamstrung by the sociocultural movement at large to downgrade the language for the sake of accessibility, which in many ways is a tragedy. 

4. Listening

In terms of podcast episodes and lectures, this can “quickly” turn into something like “productivity porn”, although, I think it’s necessary to provide a counterargument of sorts. A) when you have more generative drive and are able to intuit what you need, you find the info you need, listen, analyze, and move on, B) This then provides the actual buffer, because you are already acting and producing, it doesn’t spin into 20 podcast episodes (intentional extreme example for the dramatic flair) followed by zero action, reverting back to point A, you know what you need (the gap in knowledge) extract the value and exfil. If you know this tendency exists in you to slip down the productivity porn slope, set constraints and targets. Listening to a great conversation or lecture can be a very mystical experience, I had many of these moments with Awakening From The Meaning Crisis. 

5. Attention

There is something to be said for the ability to move and orient your attention at will, and how it allows for peering “behind the veil”, and seeing different perspectives. Now, the Stoic term had more to do with this vigilance over the psyche, so that your behaviors would reflect your values. However, there’s an entire dimension to address of what you are exposed to is recorded in the brain. Your mental diet then is reflected as such to what you direct your attention to and what is directing your attention (plus the forces that are attempting to hijack your attention). This entire scope of intentional awareness, where to place your attention, matters a great deal as this impacts things like doom-scrolling, losing time on what could be frivolous matters, or being pulled into directions you never wanted to be pulled in. Essentially, the Stoic term gains more gravitas when we consider this intentional vigilance of our attention and awareness as the guardian of our psyche. Orient and direct this at its maximum capacity into the world and the landscape of awe presents itself to you. The Stoics used the term, “thickness” of the moment, to describe the feeling of how much attention one poured into the moment. As a practice, noticing where your attention goes and the level of its intensity is priceless. 

6. Self-Mastery

Self-regulation leads to self-mastery, there’s an entire framework on this in the membership section. To recap the basics, resisting impulses is part of any path to self-mastery, you start small, you build it up, you bring it to the areas where you need it, and you keep repeating this until successful. Realize, however, that a lot of neurobiology goes into this: if and when there are issues there, mobilizing willpower and self-discipline is made a LOT harder. The top-down and bottom-up need to be accounted for in order for this to be successful. The practices that go into this, at their fundamentals, are the practices described by the ancients, such as fasting and resisting lust (voluntary abstinence). I’d argue those are the two most central ones, both of which can lead to a mystical experience, which have value in their own ways. Describing the context is outside of the scope of this framework, the gist is simple: learn how to navigate your desires and needs constructively, which elevates the feedback loop between self-image and self-control. 

7. Meditations

I would describe this as “playing” with (or rather: practicing) the models of the given school. Marcus Aurelius his Meditations are an example of this and exactly called like this because of the intention. Though, the perfectly precise, rather it was called: "Ta eis heauton" (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτὸν), which translates to "To Himself" or "Things to Himself". These “things” being the Dogmata, defined as the guiding principles, he was practicing. These don’t have to be written down, although of course, it can help. Rather, it was the engagement with the practices and the models, which were purely cognitive that were meant by this. Exercises of reason also involve deconstructing sensations, beliefs, or actions according to the schemas and models provided by the school one was a part of. Practically, that would mean familiarizing oneself with such models and schemas, so you have something to practice. One of these is the indifferent to indifferent things Stoic schema, which is as follows: Does this depend on me (is this within my control)? Yes? Do something about it. No? Figure out a way to accept it. This is just one illustration, there are many more from different schools that have their place and value, which are an avenue to explore. 

8. Indifferent to indifferent things

The most accessible way to look at this is to focus on what you “should” care about, or do care about. And to give very little credence and attention to things you really don’t care about. People are pulled in all manner of directions, care about this, be outraged about this, be moved to tears about this, it’s been weaponized and beaten to death in the current sociopolitical climate. If your attention, your care, and your empathy are constantly being pulled to such things, there is very little energy going to things you actually care about, want to build, and want to protect. In the membership section, the Ta Erotika framework highlights this. 

9. Imagination exercises

The view from above is one of many exercises, due to its accessibility and usefulness it is the one I’m highlighting. Put simply, it is an imaginative exercise where you move yourself into a 3rd person perspective. This can start with you sitting in the room you are in, watching yourself sit there, then zoom out to the house you sit, the area your house is situated, and so forth, until you finally have removed yourself far enough to see the earth, perhaps even the galaxy, or even deeper into the universe, perhaps all the way to God into this metaphysical dimension. As with any practice, it takes, well, practice. The more you do it, the more potency and depth it garners. 

10. Examination of conscience

Effectively, this would encapsulate strategies to self-understand and self-analyze, to make meaningful changes in behavior. Journaling can be a part of this. This isn’t a “dear diary” practice of pouring out your feelings, though if it were needed, have at it. Rather, it is more oriented towards a debrief, essentially asking and answering: “Am I doing what I said I would do?” and “Does my behavior align with my values?”, these are the most essential questions to start with, tracking your behaviors (through this or a scoring system) is a very black and white no bullshit approach to spotting where you are falling short. Self-awareness is necessary but insufficient in this process to course correct, once you spot the pattern, address and adjust. 

11. Dialogue

The practice here is considered internalizing the Sage. In effect, internalizing the process of differentiating and uncoupling co-identifications, beliefs, narratives, and perspectives. Generally, this takes place dialogically and can be considered the original therapy, the idea being to expose your blind spots and be faced with the inconsistencies between your values and behavior, and your models and your reality. Effectively internalizing a system that reduces self-deception and self-delusion, through dialogue with the Self or aspects thereof. This can take many different forms and shapes, the point is getting a handle on your foolishness and irrationality and instilling a sense of accountability. Seeking a mentor in this regard would be a good step forward. 

12. Prayer

Does not need further elaboration, considering we spent most of this framework exploring the impact of prayer on various levels. Spare a thought for our goldilocks universe so uniquely designed to facilitate life, the other mysterious forces that drive the universe, our guardian angels, our inner conscience, the great heroes who inspire us, our ancestors have sacrificed and fought to get us this far, and perhaps even addressing your aspirational self.

13. Aspirational self

The idea behind the aspirational self is to have a model of the ideal and the aspirational you move towards with your behaviors and internal realm. A future version of yourself that is more of what you want to become, who provides the blueprint to become this gradually as time progresses. As far as mystical and spiritual experiences go, once you reach what you had in mind, or rather realize what you hoped and aimed to reach after 10 years of progress you have a moment that is very hard to describe. This ideal, vision, and self upgrades and changes as you do, as you mature, as you grow wiser, and as you gain more insight, it auto-adjusts, self-corrects, and self-organizes. There’s a case to be made here that more often than not, people use an ideal that is unattainable. We could go into this entire loop of “Well, aren’t ideals unattainable?”. However, the way I see it, it is both a constraint and definition issue, if both of these have little grounding in the self, in what is generative in you, and what is probably (through reality testing and honest introspection), then it’s easy to miss the mark here. There is a major cop-out here with people using perfection as a self-defeating concept. “Well no one is perfect, and perfection is unattainable”. Sure, but doesn’t mean you can’t get better, WAY BETTER EVEN, it’s a low-order argument. There’s a pretty big difference between a convoluted idea of perfection, and the process, practice, and orientation to be and act as good as possible, that would border on the ideal. The idea of perfection in that sense is self-limiting, ironically enough, to people at both ends of the spectrum: 1) those who use it as a get-out jail-free card and never live up to their ideals, and 2) those who suffer from perfectionism that either get stuck or keep falling short of their ideal because they can’t get a more grounded sense of the process. Both of which could very well be trauma responses. You can find this in the article: The Path To Your Aspirational Self.

14. Strength Training/ Exercise

It’s simple: movement changes the brain, it changes emotional connectivity in the brain in terms of how it emerges in the frontal areas (as in bringing it into conscious cognition), thus the entire cascade of changes in state and neurology matter a whole lot in how much information we get to access, and in term how many aspects of self we get to access. The framework on Strength Training as Self Actualization goes into this deeper, which is both on Substack and the Membership Section. Training can be used as an introspective exercise when approaching it as such, as a practice of the narratives and experiences we have during it. 

15. Spectator Novus

This is a combination of point 5 and point 7. The brain has a tendency to work on memory for the sake of efficiency, it A) regularly filters out what is not relevant to the moment and or state and B) doesn’t update the visual experience to reflect the scope of reality because it is too energy-intensive, so it makes you “blind” to things until the contrast is big enough. This is very adaptive, but at the same time, it obviously has the drawback of blinding us to the mundane, the subtleties and details that are present in each given moment. Additionally, because of the need to map reality and build a coherent model of it, this sense of novelty is immense in children, hence the heightened awe for basically everything. This sense of awe at this level in many ways is still accessible to us if we manage to direct our attention and heal our dopamine circuits. If your dopamine circuits have been fried you’re not going to be able to experience much of this. And neither if your ability to shift attention has been degraded. Addressing both these aspects with focus drills and the avoidance of so much exogenously primed dopamine will go a long way in seeing the world anew even in the most mundane of landscapes and moments. 

16. Traditional Eastern Meditations

There is a huge body of research that outlines the effects of meditation and breathwork on the brain how perception of reality changes, and of course most obviously, how this factors into mystical, spiritual, and religious experiences. The membership section has both frameworks present. The most accessible practice in the meditation department is a body awareness “scan”. The one I feel has a lot of value is being able to feel the pulsations from the gut the heart, and the brain, that’s the three-center meditation John Vervaeke outlines in After Socrates. The logic behind it is very simple: you have 3 brains, the gut is one, the heart is one, and then obviously the brain is the last one. Seeing all of these hold a large amount of neurons they have their own levels and dimensions of intelligence. Improving biofeedback loops has a lot of value in terms of setting yourself up to experience these altered states. This doesn’t need to take long btw, 2 minutes of the 3 center mediation would be enough to shift your state and your perceptions. 

CONCLUSION

Well, that was a lot of words just to outline a prayer that Plato used in Laws. Although there is merit in the prayer itself and in its structure, the value, to me, is in the practices (the spiritual exercises) I’ve outlined. We’re “looking” for (or rather, creating) an experience, an attachment, something that guards us, guides us, animates us, enlivens us, opens us up, and centers us. These practices do all of that, the combination, ratios, intensities, and frequencies are of course individual. However, as outlined, I believe these are key to facilitating a spiritual life and heightening your spiritual sense. Play seriously with the models, read, research, contemplate, do your practices, alter the practices to fit your needs, add others you find somewhere, come up with your own practices, but above all: practice the spiritual exercises and honor that which makes life possible, who knows what it will bring you. 

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