All right, so hello.
I'm a little bit out of breath because I just worked out here at the gym here at Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
If you've been following the last few emails / posts, I've been on a completely miraculous journey the past four or five days or so.
And I wanted to share with you some of the insights and happenings and downloads that have been going down.
Yesterday's email was just a podcast I recorded a few weeks ago—I didn't have time to share everything that had happened.
This email is a big download, 3,000+ words.
So after I sent out yesterday’s email, Chloe and I took the car and drove on out toward the town of Big Sur.
We were looking for lunch and possibly coffee, a hike, and anything else that we might come across.
It was a long winding road along the coast, but only about 15 minutes or so till we reached town.
We grabbed a tea & coffee from a very delicious coffee place called The Village.
Chloe’s tea had butterfly pea flower, hibiscus, a bunch of other stuff. Delicious.
We asked the girl at the coffee shop where she recommended for a good lunch.
She recommended the Big Sur Deli, where she specifically recommended the pesto chicken sandwich.
We got that.
It was one of the best chicken pesto sandwiches I've probably had - deliciously fresh chicken, pesto and all these juicy veggies and such on it. Absolutely fresh and delicious.
We took our sandwiches, down the road and came across an art gallery called the Hawthorne Gallery.
It had some really magnificent art from this guy who has a bunch of children who are also artists, along with 50 other artists he's curated in this space.
It was really beautiful, overlooking the ocean, kind of on a bend of the windy Big Sur highway.
We spent a little bit of time there. Talked to the girl at the reception.
Met another older couple who we recognized from Esalen as well, who were also exploring Big Sur.
And then we made our way back down toward Esalen Institute and stopped by this bookstore called the Henry Miller Library.
Henry Miller was a famous writer - who also spent time in Big Sur and at the Eselan Institute. The grounds have some really cool artwork and things.
Inside are all the writings from the types of people that spend time in Big Sur and Esalen—Alan Watts to Aldous Huxley.
And so I got completely lost in a couple of books.
The first one I picked up was called Why I Will Not Buy a Computer by Wendell Berry.
I only read the first few pages, but it really stuck with me.
The author was talking about how he's been writing for decades and the way he writes is by hand.
And then his wife will type it into a typewriter.
And that's kind of their editing process. They basically work together.
She knows what ought to be said and what ought to be left out.
And they have this process that is a cornerstone of their marriage.
He then submits his manuscript to the publishing company and they scan it into the computer for distribution.
Berry says there's many reasons he won't buy a computer. One of them being because he doesn't like to be a slave to the corporations that create them. But also because he doesn't want to waste environmental supplies and contribute to that—especially as that's a lot of what he writes about. So he didn't want to be complicit in the act of raping nature, as he put it.
One of the other things he put down that was really quite introspective, I thought, was the idea that as he's writing, if he were to use a computer, he would lose his relationship to his wife — because they work together in the writing process.
A computer might be more "efficient," but he'd lose that relationship with his wife… something deeply human.
The next book I got lost in was a big red book by Carl Jung called The Red Book.
IMAGES AT BOTTOM OF THIS!
I was reading this one for probably 30 to 45 minutes. It was absolutely captivating. Carl Jung was a psychologist and philosopher from the late 1800s into the early 1900s.
And I believe he's one of the few that eventually came to know God.
Modern thinkers like Jordan Peterson, who references Jung often, seem to constantly wrestle with God, as Jung did.
But Peterson gets locked in hyper-literal interpretations of scripture and hyper-intellectual wordiness.
Jung had similar overly analytics streams of consciousness in his work—but eventually broke through and realized words themselves are insufficient in capturing truth.
This idea inspired a phrase that came to mind during my workout:
Words are not adequate to capture God.
Belief is not adequate.
You cannot simply believe in God or know a lot of things about God.
You must know God.
And I believe that's what Jung eventually came to.
However, the book, The Red Book, is a lot of his ‘wrestlings’.
Reading it, it feels as though he's on the cusp of discovering something great. And as you're reading it, you kind of find yourself alongside the same sort of stream of thoughts—feeling that you're about to know this deep transcendent truth.
He's such a beautiful writer that it feels deeply like you're about to find out something.
I was in there for a while, following his discoveries about the difference between the “I” and the “Soul” and “God”, and how they all relate… Even the devil.
His interpretation of the devil really captivated me. More on that later…
Anyway, after the bookstore, we went back to the Esalen Institute. And there was a workshop going on about AI. It was titled AI for Social Good. I sat in a room with about 20 people, young and old. And the leader of the workshop was going through slides about artificial intelligence and the latest in technology.
We learned about an Ai generated singer-songwriter who she was on the news recently as “she” charted a number one song… again an Ai genereted artist… The lyrics however, were written by a woman. So this woman used the ai avatar as the face of her music, wrote the lyrics, and used Ai behind the voice, and instruments, and production…
And so we talked about that.
We spoke about how Neo, the new at-home robot, is now available and what that's going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now. Of course, we were all chuckling at the very disjointed Neo robot trying to open a laundry machine or dishwasher and place glasses in it. Or even do a simple task like go and fetch a water from the refrigerator, which it struggled to do pretty much everything.
But obviously all of us, as we were laughing, we were also slightly in angst and fear because we know that the deficiency of the robotic capability is only going to be like deficient for so long….
One girl at the Ai talk—a very brilliant girl, Asian girl that lives in San Francisco, formerly worked at Apple, now working in an AI company as a prompt engineer—she shared her perspective…
She told as about how the Albanian government has basically an AI agent is an AI prime minister—whose job is to spot corruption in the government. The story goes that apparently that AI agent decided one day that it was going to have 83 children agents that would then monitor the rest of the members of Parliament in Albania. So AI is being used as a rational governance tool to take out human greed and error in Albania.
So that’s social good… I guess?
Of course, many of the people were relatively terrified of a lot of the developments that have been coming around. And I shared some of my concerns and fears—namely, especially about how many of us are frightened of what ChatGPT 5, 6, 7, 8 is going to become. But a lot of us don't even realize that the true artificial intelligence that's already taken over the world is inside the algorithms. The algorithms that feed us exact content to program our brains. That know how to keep us in a loop. That keep us entertained and on the platform and totally sucking our chi out of us into these devices.
And if you think about it, it's completely true.
You look around even at people that you love and care about, and they are totally consumed by their devices.
They're taking all of the energy and the light of their consciousness—that comes from who knows where—and they're pouring their attention and energy inside of these devices, just endlessly.
When you're in a place like this in Big Sur, on a 200 foot cliff, overlooking the ocean, especially with a Qigong workshop going on—as I mentioned an email or two ago—where a Chinese master, Al Huang, who worked alongside Alan Watts and co-authored a book with him… Who's here now…
And you see it so viscerally in front of your eyes where people are working with their energy out in nature, and he's just totally vibrating, technology free, sharing this ancient eastern practice with the people...
He doesn't even like phones to film him, let alone use one himself.
But yet our entire generation is dumping our energy into the OLED screens and devices… taking all of the chi, which is just another word for energy of our bodies, and getting rid of it.
We spoke about that in the workshop. And how all of this even transgresses further into the discussion of transhumanism. When the robots are quite literally walking among us and able to self-replicate themselves and able to rule over us—what do we do? Do we merge? Do we put a chip in our brain and become a cyborg? Will that be the only way to survive? Will we just be co-living with them peacefully? Hopefully that's the case in my mind.
The girl who worked at Apple suggested that we're going to take all of the trash from planet Earth with the help of the robots and create a second moon up in the sky by orbiting all the trash into space, creating Earth into basically like a national park.
Her theory was actually that we would live on the trash planet that we create man-made, and then we can go down to Earth and view it if we feel like it. Like a national park.
Which is quite interesting.
She seems to be full cyborg team.
I'm certainly not on that boat.
I think it's potentially the mark of the beast to disconnect your soul from the humanity of the body and nature and merging it with a man-made machine.
Doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
After the AI workshop, Chloe and I went on a walk throughout the property.
Found ourselves at the house called the Murphy House, which is where Abraham Maslow spent a lot of time developing and understanding the peak experience of self-actualization.
It's also where Bell's theorem and quantum entanglement were discovered—in the very house that Chloe and I were walking in.
Alan Watts stayed there.
It's the original house from which Esalen originated.
And if you can believe it, I also found a copy of A Course in Miracles inside the house.
Which I quoted a couple emails ago: "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."
I found that highlighted on the first few pages of the book inside the Murphy House.
Chloe and I explored the property more as the sun was setting, and found some nooks for contemplation and meditation.
I could sense and feel the spirit of Alan Watts as we walked among the golden rays of orange hues of light of the sun bathing the treetops.
As we walked closer back toward the library on the right, in the big field, the main area of Esalen, there was a group of people in a workshop that appeared to be screaming, yelling, and throwing up in kind of a big circle.
So we went into the bookstore, front desk area, and asked what was going on.
It appeared to be some kind of—what I supposed to be—like a grief release ceremony.
And that's exactly what it was.
It was not a mushroom trip, but a tobacco-infused ceremony where you would focus on something or someone you're trying to forgive and let go of.
And then you would snort the tobacco.
And that was supposed to help you release the stuff you're trying to let go of and hold onto. And I couldn't help but connect it back to the idea of forgiveness within Jesus. And that in and of itself was an interesting kind of thought loop that I got into a little bit later on at dinner.
Then, while we were in the bookstore, we were exploring a little bit more.
And guess what I found?
Another copy of the giant Red Book by Carl Jung.
And I made a commitment that I would go in and read that soon.
Then we went into the dining hall and had dinner. I was really thinking that I wanted to meet a lot more people here.
Within the next few hours of setting that simple intention, I was actually able to somehow attract in a conversation about some really interesting topics with everybody that I wanted to connect with.
Spoke to a guy named Parker who ended up at Esalen as well by accident, yet seemingly not by accident. We had a lot of very interesting mutual ideas that we were sharing together. Concepts that we were both fascinated by. The problem that he's been working on for the last five years.
Met another woman who is in real estate, but also had the exact understanding of Christianity and Buddhism and everything that I've come to know and understand.
And she's been coming to Esalen for many years. Her mom as well, since the '60s.
Met another guy who was reading a book called The Body Keeps the Score.
We spoke about releasing trauma and grief and how Jesus potentially works into that equation.
As of course, The Body Keeps the Score is more of a self-instruction manual for offloading trauma and grief.
There's sort of Christian metaphysical ideas that you can actually—if you went through anything super traumatic—you can let go of it easily if you basically give your life to Christ and accept Jesus into your heart to sort of offload the sin of your own doing and even your ancestors that were kind of baked into your DNA.
As you can tell, this is all very lofty, woo-woo stuff. But there's obviously something going on if you explore and relate to your own existence earnestly.
The conversation continued late into the night.
And then Chloe and I decided to do a night hot springs dip.
So we sat there and discussed some of the conversations we were having—overlooking the crashing waves on the coastline of Big Sur, the smell of sulfur emanating from the pool—and relaxing every cell in our body, seemingly detoxifying us from the stress and electromagnetic fields from living in the world.
Here at Esalen, there's virtually no Wi-Fi except for a secret network you can tune into from your villa… where I am right now… or yurt, rather.
And so that was last night.
We went to bed.
I woke up, went to the meditation hut, which is by a nearby stream.
There were three women meditating in there whom I joined for 25 minutes or so.
Attended breakfast again.
Met some of the girls at the grief-releasing workshop.
One of them actually recognized me from YouTube from a while back.
And then we continued our conversation with Parker, a Russian woman named Marina, and another guy who told us that his father had worked as an FBI agent in Alamogordo in and around the year the UFOs crashed there—shortly after the atomic bomb testing—which then were transported to Area 51.
The man told us, who's in his probably 60s now, his father even on his deathbed, would never reveal what he saw.
Afterwards, Parker and I—the young guy who's again, seemingly here by accident and had a lot of similarities to me in terms of what he's building entrepreneurially—we went into the bookstore and we were reading The Red Book by Carl Jung, which has popped up a couple of times.
And I wanted to leave it off with an excerpt there, which we both found extremely interesting.
[Jung:] I feel that I must speak to you. Why won't you let me sleep, since I am so weary? I feel that the disturbance comes from you. What induces you to keep me awake?
[Soul:] Now is no time to sleep, but you should be awake and prepare important matters in nocturnal work. The great work begins.
[Jung:] What great work?
[Soul:] The work that should now be undertaken. It is a great and difficult work. There is no time to sleep, if you find no time during the day to remain in the work.
. But I had no idea that something of this kind was taking place.
[Soul:] You might have noticed by the fact that I have been disturbing your sleep for a long time. You have been too unconscious for a long time. Now you must go to a higher level of consciousness. There is no one who could say it as well as you could.
[Jung:]I am ready. What is it? Speak!
[Soul:] You should listen: to no longer be a Christian is easy. But then what? For more is yet to come. Everything is waiting for you. And you? You remain silent and have nothing to say. But you should speak. Why have you received the revelation? You mustn't hide it. You busy yourself with the form? Has the form ever been important, when it is a matter of revelation?
[Jung:] But you are not thinking that I should publish what I have written? That would be a disaster. And who would understand it?
[Soul:] No, listen! You should not break up a marriage, namely the marriage with me, no person should supplant me... I want to rule alone.
[Jung:] So you want to rule? From whence do you take the right for such a presumption?
[Soul:] This right comes to me because I serve you and your calling. I could just as well say, you came first, but above all your calling comes first.
[Jung:] But what is my calling?
[Soul:] The new religion and its proclamation.
[Jung:]Oh God, how should I do this?
[Soul:] Do not be of such little faith. No one knows it as you do.
[Jung:] But who knows, if you are not lying?
[Soul] Ask yourself if I am lying. I speak the truth.
And then the very last excerpt I'll ask you to look up on your own is about this dream he had of this man in a red cloak that shows up to his door—whom he thought was the devil, but whom he realized was actually joy.
Search Carl Yung, “The Red one” Excerpt. You should be able to find it.
It to me seems like this misconception that—as a hyper-intellectual, similar to a Jordan Peterson type—the hyper-intellectual gets so lost in thought and letter and intellect that they totally miss the truth that the words of scripture are pointing to. They get lost in the words
Joy itself and love and bliss, which is God, and that experience to know God is that of joy and love and bliss—many intellectuals perceive it to be the devil.
In the excerpt, as you can see, Jung reveals that whom he thought was the devil was actually joy.
Now, of course, this take can be mistaken. Many people think that the things that will give them joy are actually the devil. But in this case, that's not what I gathered.
Think of hyper ‘heady’ people who can’t even let loose and dance. They’re too serious to experience joy. And so to them… letting loose, having a little fun, dancing around is how the devil takes form. They entrap themself in hyper serious thought.
More to come.
We have less than 24 hours here, sadly, now.
But I hope you enjoyed this post.
It's been one of the longer ones.
And I'll see you in the next one.
-Arlin
