God From the Machine
Alchemizing Spirit and Matter in the 21st Century
Hi Everyone,
I hope your 2024 has wrapped up nicely and made for a great end to a wonderful year.
Thank you all for being on this journey with me! I'm incredibly grateful that over 130 people have made the choice to receive my writing directly to their inbox. At some point, I hope to make this a full-time endeavor, and you are all the early adopters I will remember with great reverence for deciding to join this adventure. Once again, thank you!
For the Frontier Letter and I, 2024 has proven a meaningful journey whose path I would have never anticipated.
Today serves as a milestone post, albeit an unconventional one. I wrote the first section in June and the second in December to fully encapsulate the year and get a sense of the pathway forward. As is thematic in this newsletter, I see an ever-pressing need to bring back the nourishment of psyche and spirit alongside our technological paradigm. This matters more than ever. Here, you will get an abstract sense of how the journey has evolved, and then I will wrap up with more of a practical goal-setting section.
Enjoy!
Reading time: Approximately 14 minutes
The Divine Child, Transformation, and Modern Alchemy
June 21, 2024
My favorite time to write is when I get a feeling, one I have at this moment: having a thousand things to say but not sure what.
I'm reminded of an experience I read about last night in Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. He considered publishing a book, Symbols of Transformation, which he knew would cause a separation between himself and his friend, teacher, and mentor, Sigmund Freud. Jung writes,
"Should I keep my thoughts to myself, or should I risk the loss of so important a friendship? At last, I resolved to go ahead with the writing—and it did indeed cost me Freud's friendship. After the break with Freud, all my friends and acquaintances dropped away. My book was declared to be rubbish; I was a mystic, and that settled the matter." (Pg.167)
Jung described the following time as one of constant disorientation and a feeling of psychic disturbance. To understand the source of the disturbance, he wrote his entire life story down twice and combed it over to see if he could find anything.
Nothing.
He had a thought that went something like, "well, since I know nothing, I'll trust the instinctual manifestation of my unconscious mind and do what occurs to me." A memory emerged: when he was a child, he would go down to the shore and grab stone and clay to mold model towns. He recognized there was a feeling associated with the memory! He had an impression that if he returned to this endeavor of building a model city with stone, he would unlock parts of himself 'locked' in the memory. He recalls,
"The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood memory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I distinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles. These structures had fascinated me for a long time. To my astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. 'Aha,' I said to myself, 'there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?” (Pg.173)
He felt like a fool playing childish games as a grown man, but as he remarks, "this moment was a turning point in my fate… I had… only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my own myth. For the building game was only a beginning. It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down."
Not only did it work, but what followed was Jung's journey into the unconscious, one he knew carried danger and had caused others of great intellect to go mad; Jung recounts,
"I stood helpless before an alien world; everything in it seemed difficult and incomprehensible. I was living in a constant state of tension; often I felt as if gigantic blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me. One thunderstorm followed another. My enduring these storms was a question of brute strength. Others have been shattered by them—Nietzsche, and Hölderlin, and many others." (Pg.173)
Two nights before I read this story, I had a dream:
I was standing in front of a massive medieval castle. Cars were pulling up to the castle, and it was as if everyone important was there. The event was my brother's1 funeral! The castle had a spiral staircase starting at the base, ascending around the outside of the castle up to the highest room of the tallest tower. When I arrived at the top, I approached a casket in the middle of the room.
My brother joyously popped up! He was not dead but waiting for me.
He was so exuberant and completely unaware that people thought he was dead and that it was his funeral! I felt dread and uneasiness; I knew that I needed to get him out fast because it wasn't long before he would die. At the end of the dream, we walked to the door, which was the exit of this room, but I felt that on the other side, challenges awaited. The dream ended.
The analysis of the dream was a mirror into Jung's path. The dream said that I had managed to find my way to the creative and adventurous energy of my inner child, and now I must overcome the challenge required to integrate him back into the world.
There are aspects of humanity that are not well understood, both internal and external. Jung lived in this idea space, but he seemed to understand it all too well. In Fringe to Frontier, I make the point that genius also has a touch of madness. They operate in an idea space years ahead of their time. Jung understood something about the psyche that is still not well accepted in the mainstream today, the potential of personality is more than simply the field of consciousness.
Jung's prelude to his life's work was a return to that which was locked in him as a child, which was signaled by his unconscious. Like Jung, the psychic energy of my inner child was not integrated. However, the tide has slowly been turning for me, and now the path has opened. He has been unlocked, and my dream communicated that he is alive and well and that a hero's journey awaits as I manifest him into the world.
I have been searching for the path to this integration since 2021, and it seems that I have found it! Jung's path eventually led him to study alchemy. Interestingly, I see what I'm doing as a sort of modern alchemy: technological alchemy if you will.
Rethinking Spirit and Matter in Our Technological Era
My alchemical understanding is currently in a nascent state. I do know that it is often considered a precursor to modern chemistry and, more broadly, to the scientific tradition. Alchemists had a multifaceted pursuit: to turn base metals into noble metals, create the elixir of immortality, and create a panacea to cure all diseases. The highest of the alchemists' pursuits: create the philosopher's stone—the stone that would turn base metals into gold.
The modern eye may see this as a delusion of an irrational time, a view I'd have to disagree with. Maps of Meaning taught me that alchemists conceptualized the world differently. Here, I will present a brief illustration of how an alchemist might have thought, drawn from Maps of Meaning: an alchemist tasting lead and feeling ill might interpret this as the lead 'containing demons.'
Physical matter had the essence of spirit2.
We have separated matter from spirit—Objects of the material world do not contain character.
I think, however, the alchemists were onto something. The elixir of immortality is what we would now call anti-aging, the panacea to cure diseases, which would fall under modern medicine. We have caught up on their pursuits in a material manner. You see, though, because the alchemists entangled spirit and matter, turning base metals into gold was not only a chemical pursuit but a psychological and spiritual one. How should one act to turn what is less into something greater? How can we act in a manner that would allow someone to be that which transforms?
The separation of matter and spirit invited the scientific paradigm to freely develop, but there is a major downstream problem. While we have learned how to transform matter to a miraculous degree, the detachment of spirit and the subsequent scientific analysis of spirit caused stunting of its development. In other words, our technological advancement is superior to our psychological and spiritual makeup, which doesn't seem to have kept pace.
Yet, one might ask: if going inward is so crucial, why haven’t we collectively done it already? I believe it’s because we lack a unifying myth that encourages inward analysis of our shared story—a topic I’ll be exploring in depth in an upcoming piece. (If you want to be the first to know when it drops, subscribe here.)
Therefore, there is no unifying cohesive framework that allows us to understand what guides the matter we create. We face this challenge head-first in modernity. The technological potential for an inconceivably miraculous future is commensurate with the potential for darkness.
In our era, we need those who can evaluate technological intricacies while simultaneously exploring the depths of the human psyche.
This is the path I walk.
The Path to Integration
December 26th
2024 has been a meaningful journey. With it, I explored many interesting areas of thought and was able to write far more frequently than the previous year. One of my favorite parts about writing is getting to understand myself and the external world better. When I find something that sparks those areas of interest, it's as if a whole piece is already ready to be written.
And sometimes, the universe has a way of confirming you're on the right path.
Yesterday, I opened my inbox to Packy McCormick's The Return of Magic, energizing me with excitement. In it, he uses the Telepathy Tapes as a jumping point into an exploration of a societal awakening of a return to magic. Throughout, he uses multiple arguments to point to an underlying connected consciousness we're all tapped into. It's a long read, so a quick summary will not do it justice; I recommend checking it out. I also highly recommend the Telepathy Tapes, which I will write about in the future. His piece was energizing because it touches on areas I've been looking at, dancing around, and pointing to over the course of 2024.
This piece reignited my reflections on my own journey, one that has grown increasingly spiritual over the past year. The keen eye may have noticed this trend in my writing.
I started down the path of continual self-improvement when I was in my mid-to-late-teens, but starting in 2023 and in-depth in 2024, my journey became far more spiritual. I kindled a religiousness in me, one in which I experienced dreams, synchronicities, fantasies, feelings derived from another, calls to adventure, and conscience guiding my path forward. I've been researching and studying the mystery of psyche, spirit, God, and religion for years… but this year was different.
Quick disclaimer.
I find that people will emotionally flare up and have a negative (or positive) reaction at the mention of God. My experience is that people tend to have in-built responses to the concept based on their negative and poor memories of a religious institution, crazy people who misappropriated a religion to act terribly, and other reprehensible misappropriations of the concept. This is not to say I joined some institution; in fact, the institution, for me, has felt a barrier to my experience with God. I invite you too keep an open mind if you find yourself resisting.
As I've delved deeper into the mysteries of psyche and spirit, I've encountered moments that felt profoundly connected to something greater—a concept we call God.
Everyone's path to interfacing with God will look and feel different. It's why various religions point to a similar underlying phenomenon—there's more than one path to God. Each religious text is a rule book to align oneself to experience God. A blueprint for the spirit, if you will. I, for example, felt intimations of God through the pursuit of psychological individuation and studying the biblical narrative.
The way one arrives there is beside the point. The point is that there's something mysterious within psyche and spirit that we don't seem to fundamentally grasp, which is touched on in the Telepathy Tapes. Who knows how much of this we're even close to understanding, beckoning an intense curiosity within me and, furthermore, a chilling worry given the times we're up against.
Through 2025, I will continue to explore the depths of the human mind and its capabilities. It's an area of complete underdevelopment and study relative to our technological front. It's partly why I wrote The Lost Origins of Technology. I think that we've narrowed our focus on what technology is to software and electronics. By the definition of the word, we can conceptualize dream analysis, interacting with story and myth, and Jungian Individuation as technology.
I've said it many times in different ways: in an era of extreme technological sophistication, we will go within and seek that which is uniquely human. It's possible that this will take the form of shared connections through spirituality, religion, and a deeper understanding of consciousness by exploring areas that were once shamed out of existence for not fitting the scientific framework. In many ways, this will onset a necessary spiritual and psychological reawakening, which will onset the Return of Magic, to use Packy's term.
Through this, I will try to help understand and navigate how this unfolds in hopes of shining a light on what's occurring.
We will not 'end' our scientific paradigm. We shouldn't. It has produced marvelous feats of mankind. But we have subsequently produced a cultural criticism of that which doesn't fit into its framework. Paradoxically, creating a dogma out of science.
Let’s be blunt: we’ve made astonishing strides in software, AI, and biotech, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of our spiritual and psychological depths. And if we fail to nurture those depths, we risk creating a hollow society—brimming with advanced toys but starving for meaning.
In 2025, I aim to delve into areas that may challenge traditional scientific frameworks, bringing an open-minded but investigative approach. That doesn't mean I will be sloppy or refrain from using logic and reason. There are many things that cannot be assessed through scientific methods, but that doesn't mean they should be shunned and cast away.
It's hard to categorize all that interests me alongside technology. It's something that closely approximates psychological and spiritual phenomena or the unique capabilities of our mind. I would categorize these to include a combination of psychology, religion, spirituality, mythology, fiction/literature, parapsychology, UFO/UAPs, ancient civilization, and ancient mysteries.
I will also continue to explore our current and evolving technological paradigm as well. I don't think the two are unrelated. I have some ideas for technologies that can help facilitate diving into one's psyche to help others experience the idea that our consciousness is far more expansive than our mere minds (ego). It may be the case that while we might just be a biological process, that process taps us into something fundamental about the cosmos we share as a species, like Jung's collective unconscious.
Jung's work can, in many ways, be seen as a new vocabulary that allowed him to semi-safely continue the study of something ancient. It's certainly part of the reason I'm drawn to him; he used a rigorous approach to demonstrate the validity of the mysteries of the mind to advance the field tremendously.
Here, I want to continue the thought of advancing these areas of exploration. The esoteric ideas are important to be looked at alongside our world of matter. This is why I conceptualized myself as a technological alchemist. I think that my goal here is to try and bring spirit back to life alongside matter. The alchemist saw them existing inseparably. However, I think both are realms of truth that coexist and that we may be able to eventually reconcile. The realms of aught/is and morality/matter.
There is a significant amount here, and we're in for a crazy ride over the next five years.
I'm going to be here for it not only as a keen observer but as a thinker, writer, creator, and builder.
Where does this leave us as we wrap up 2024?
Foraging Into The Future
Throughout, I dropped some seeds that I will start to water in 2025 as I expand my thinking on these topics. The psyche and spirit must be re-nourished en masse, and here we can discover, or rediscover, its power through investigation into each.
These ideas may all seem speculative and unprovable, but it doesn't mean they're not worth exploring. The only way to understand and potentially integrate these ideas into society is to walk bravely into the unknown on these esoteric, heretical, and unknown topics, throw away what is false, and merge into the culture what is foundationally important. I understand that the risk is quite high, given that the ideas that sit on the margin are also plagued with con-artists, deceivers, and liars. That is why we must take a rigorous and thoughtful approach to understand these ideas and what they mean for us.
That is what the Frontier Letter is about.
It's about finding what is beyond our reach of understanding, taking it, researching, understanding, and tinkering with it so that it can be integrated into the culture and society to make our individuals and shared existence better.
If that sounds like something you want to be a part of, subscribe to join the conversation.
I can't wait to explore this in 2025 together. This is emergent, and by looking at these ideas, we can bring them forth and make them relevant and safe for everyone. I have some great pieces drafted that I can hardly wait to drop in your inbox soon! I'm excited for a year of exploring these fascinating ideas together and cannot wait to see how the new year unfolds.
While these explorations of consciousness and spirituality form the philosophical core of my work, they're grounded in practical goals for the year ahead; however, I won't digress too deeply into them. I do want to reaffirm that my goal is to seek truth. While the drive to grow subscribers is palpable, I will never do so at the cost of truth. Therefore, as a reader, the contract you enter is that, above all, the three following items will be superordinate to subscriber growth and money. If I ever seem to stray off the path, please let me know.
1. Truth
2. Interest/Curiosity
3. Meaning
As we continue this journey together, I hope to explore the intersection of psyche, spirit, and technology in ways that inspire and uplift, making the mysterious more accessible and the impossible achievable.
Where do you see spirit (re)merging with matter in your everyday life? Let me know—your ideas might shape our collective journey in 2025.
Happy New Year, folks!
Once again, thank you for reading - we're just getting started :)
Until next time, take care of yourself, everybody!
Dom
As part of the analysis of the dream, I identified my brother as a representation of the positive side of the puer aeternus, that is, the eternal boy. The positive side of the puer is that of creative potential, newness, and hope for the future, an archetype typically preceding a hero's journey.
Defined as the nonphysical part of a person, which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.