Self-Improvement and Interesting Knowledge

Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer Uncover the Archon: Why Stupidity is a Lethal Weapon (and How to Walk Away From It)

Discover why intelligence is no defense against the rising tide of collective stupidity and how a hidden “mind virus” is being used to hijack your magical potential. By blending the wartime insights of Dietrich Bonhoeffer with the radical science of morphic resonance, this article reveals a startling alchemical secret: the only way to win the war for your mind is to stop fighting it altogether. Learn how to shed your dogmatic baggage and reclaim your sovereignty through a simple, reality-bending practice that the powers-that-be would rather you never discover.

It is a curious thing to watch the human animal in its natural habitat, surrounded by the dizzying abundance of the modern world, yet choosing with strange enthusiasm to fight over the crumbs.

We have the sum total of human knowledge in our pockets, yet we use it to argue with strangers about the shape of the Earth or to work ourselves into a lather over the private lives of people we will never meet. But why is this?

Well, as I have mentioned over and over in my work, from the inner alchemy perspective there is a parasitic force (let’s call it the Archon) that has performed a bit of psychic surgery on the species. By stitching its own cramped, fearful mind onto ours, it transforms potential magicians and creators into morose, self-centered beasts. We become fools by design, separated from our own brilliance by a mental fog that makes us prioritize our own smallness.

In short, we become stupid.

“Stupid” though can be a hard word to pin down and define, often thrown around as a simple insult for someone who can’t do long division. But to truly understand the connection between stupid and the Archon and how a perfectly functional brain turns into a brick, we have to look at Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was both a Lutheran pastor and a theologian/philosopher, and he was a man who had the misfortune of watching an entire cultured society descend into a collective fever dream during the dark days of 1930s Germany. From a prison cell, he realized that stupidity isn’t a lack of grey matter. It’s a choice, albeit an unconscious one, as I will explain as we go along.

Bonhoeffer’s big reveal was that stupidity is actually a social disease. You don’t usually find a “stupid” person living alone in the woods; the condition requires a crowd. He noticed that when a group is seized by a powerful ideology or a charismatic cause, the individuals within that group undergo a transformation. They don’t lose their ability to think; they simply give it up. It is as if they have been hypnotized by the glare of power, rendering them unable to process any fact that doesn’t fit the script they’ve been handed.

You can see this in action when you try to reason with someone caught in this grip. You can present mountains of evidence, logic, and common sense, but it bounces off them like pebbles off a tank. They aren’t interested in the truth because they are “self-satisfied.” They feel protected by the herd and empowered by the nonsense they spout. In this state, the person becomes a puppet, a mouthpiece for a system that has hollowed them out.

The most chilling part of his theory is the “cure,” or rather, the lack of one. Bonhoeffer argued that you cannot talk someone out of this kind of stupidity. Since it wasn’t logic that got them there, logic won’t get them out. They are under a spell that only breaks when the external system itself fails. The internal mental fog only clears when the power structure that created it collapses or loses its grip. Until that happens, trying to reason with the “stupid” is like trying to explain color to someone who has firmly decided to keep their eyes sewn shut.

The Archon: Bridging Bridge Bonhoeffer’s observations

This mental hijacking usually starts when someone decides that thinking is simply too much of a chore. They opt for the pre-packaged, microwaveable reality of dogma instead. It is the path of least resistance where you let a man in a tall hat, a person with an officially sanctioned badge, or a dusty book from a few millennia ago do the heavy lifting for you. These authority figures are often appointed behind closed doors in meetings you weren’t invited to, yet people hand over the keys to their consciousness without a second thought. They treat these external sources as the final, unmovable boundaries of truth, and in doing so, they build a comfortable little prison cell for their own intellect.

But as I explored in my work on Overcoming The Archon Through Alchemy, this isn’t just about a few people being lazy. We are talking about full-scale memetic warfare. You see it every day on your screen: people screaming themselves hoarse over battles that have absolutely nothing to do with their actual lives. They’ve become soldiers for a cause they didn’t choose, fighting for memes they didn’t create. It’s a mind virus, a term that’s been trendy lately but has been lurking in the shadows of human history since long before the internet gave it a high-speed rail system. Bonhoeffer saw the symptoms in the streets of Germany, and today we see them in the digital trenches.

This is where the psychic reality of the Archon gets truly weird. We aren’t just talking about bad ideas; we are talking about a contagion that exists in the very fabric of our shared reality. Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance suggests that when enough people start vibrating at the frequency of a particular thought, that thought becomes a “habit” of nature. It creates a morphogenic field, a sort of invisible blueprint that makes it easier for the next person to catch the same idea, like a cosmic cold that skips the lungs and goes straight for the soul.

The classic example of this is the 100th Monkey Theory. The story goes that on a remote island, a group of monkeys started washing their sweet potatoes before eating them. Once the “100th monkey” learned the trick, the knowledge supposedly jumped across the ocean to monkeys on entirely different islands who had no physical contact with the first group. Whether or not the monkeys actually did the dishes is less important than the principle: once a certain threshold of consciousness is reached, the idea becomes a property of the field itself. It cascades. (This is a complex theory with many critics, so I will make a dedicated video on this, stay tuned!).

In the hands of the Archon therefore, this becomes a weaponized stupidity. As more people surrender to the dogmatic mind virus, the morphogenic field of “The Useful Idiot” grows stronger. It becomes a psychic gravity well that is increasingly hard to escape. You aren’t just fighting your own bad habits; you are fighting a global resonance of self-centered morosity that wants to keep you small, predictable, and remarkably easy to manage. The cascading effect means that as the number of infected minds increases, the virus doesn’t just add up… it multiplies. You’re not just seeing a trend; you’re seeing a dimensional imposition that turns the magical potential of the human mind into a mere relay station for someone else’s agenda.

Alchemical Retuning: Shielding Yourself from Morphic Contagion

In my book, Overcoming the Archon Through Alchemy, I dive deep into the energetic mechanics required to survive this never-ending radio broadcast of dark horror we call stupidity. It is a frequency, a low-vibrational hum that seeks to sync your heartbeat with the thrum of the herd. To withstand it, you need more than just a clever retort; you need an alchemical shield.

If the dangers of this condition aren’t obvious, a quick glance at history provides a grim reminder. Bonhoeffer didn’t just write about stupidity; he was eventually consumed by the very machinery of it, executed by a system that had traded its soul for a collection of slogans. Stupidity is not a harmless quirk; it is a lethal force. It can kill you just as surely as any poison, often while wearing the mask of virtue.

We see this frequently in movements that drape themselves in the guise of “love” and “protection.” Consider the suffocating neighbor or the overbearing collective that, in the name of “keeping you safe” or “helping the cause,” strips away your agency, monitors your thoughts, and eventually smothers your spirit. It is a helpfulness that destroys, a contagion of “care” that acts like an autoimmune disease: the body of humanity attacking its own healthy cells because it has been told they are a threat.

Bonhoeffer’s ultimate advice was a radical form of survival: do not fight it. I advocate the same. When you are facing a tide of a million lemmings, you don’t stand your ground and argue with the lead rodent about the geography of the cliff. You get out of the way. If you don’t, the sheer mass of that unthinking momentum will crush you.

The trap for the modern seeker is the “group.” Inner alchemists are not known for their social clubs or their membership cards. They don’t sit in circles swapping meme identities or handing the Archon a convenient list of names and addresses for future annihilation. Instead, the true work happens in the sanctuary of aloneness.

If you catch a fleeting glimmer of lucidity (that rare second where you realize you’ve been an unwitting foot soldier in a memetic war over nothing) the only sane response is to run. Run away from the screens that function as the Archon’s nervous system. Run away from the digital noise that keeps you tethered to the hive mind.

Finding solace in aloneness is the primary methodology. It is about a physical and mental removal that allows your own frequency to stabilize. You can use any meditation that works; simply closing your eyes and focusing on the mechanical rise and fall of your breath can be enough to break the spell. But for a more profound detachment, I recommend a technique I developed called “Amnesia Walking.”

You can find a detailed breakdown of this practice below, but the essence is simple: you go for a long walk and, for the duration of that journey, you pretend you have complete amnesia. You forget your name, your debts, your politics, and your history. You move through the world like an alien who has just dropped onto a strange planet. You look at the trees, the pavement, and the people as if you have never seen such things before. By shedding the “you” that the Archon has spent years building, you detach from the morphogenic field of the crowd. In that silence, you don’t just find peace, you find yourself!

Reclaiming Your Magical Potential

The beauty of the amnesia walk is that it serves as a hard reboot for a system currently clogged with the Archon’s malware. When you successfully drop the heavy baggage of your identity, you are doing more than just taking a stroll to clear your head. You are actively starving the parasite. The mind virus requires your personal history, your grievances, and your social standing to maintain its grip. Without those anchors, the signal of the crowd starts to flicker and fade, replaced by a quiet, shimmering clarity that has been there all along.

This is the moment where you finally reclaim your magical potential. True magic isn’t about waving a wand to turn a neighbor into a toad, tempting as that might be when they are blasting the Archon’s favorite radio station at midnight. Real magic is the ability to perceive reality without the distortion of a pre-packaged lens. It is the power to stand in the center of a chaotic world and remain unswayed by the morphic resonance of the mob. By pretending to be a stranger in your own life, you break the contracts you never signed and dissolve the dogmas you never actually believed.

Once the static of collective stupidity is silenced, your mind ceases to be a mere relay station for external authorities. You become an originator of thought rather than a carrier of a contagion. You start to see the world not as a collection of lack and limitations, but as a playground of infinite probability. The Archon wants you to be a morose beast of burden, but through the alchemy of aloneness and the simple act of forgetting who you were told to be, you step back into your role as a creator. So, the next time the world feels like it is closing in with its slogans and its badges, just keep walking until you forget why you were supposed to be afraid in the first place.

The Amnesia Walk: A Quick Start Guide for Aspiring Aliens

If you feel the Archon’s mental fog rolling in, it is time to deploy a powerful weapon in the alchemical arsenal. This isn’t about finding yourself; it is about losing the version of yourself that everyone else invented. Follow these steps to initiate a system override.

Step 1: The Great Disconnect Leave your phone at home. If you must bring it for safety, turn it off and bury it at the bottom of your bag. That glass rectangle is the primary conduit for the mind virus at this time, and you cannot be a mysterious stranger if you are checking your notifications every thirty seconds.
Step 2: Pick a Direction Do not plan a route. Planning is a habit of the old you. Just step out your front door and start moving. Your only goal is to walk until the familiar feels slightly weird.
Step 3: The Identity Shed As you walk, begin to mentally peel off your labels. Forget your name, your job, your political leanings, and that embarrassing thing you said in 2012. If a thought pops up starting with “I am…” or “I need to…”, let it float away like a stray balloon.
Step 4: The Alien Gaze Look at everything as if you have just arrived from a galaxy three sectors over. Why do these humans put plants in boxes? Why are they moving in shiny metal shells? Treat a stoplight like a bizarre religious artifact. By stripping away the “meaning” of these things, you stop the Archon from using them to anchor your reality.
Step 5: Embrace the Void If you start to feel a little lightheaded or disoriented, congratulations. That is the feeling of your magical potential waking up. You are no longer a node in a network of stupidity; you are a blank slate.
Step 6: The Return As you approach your front door, allow the details of your life to slowly settle back into place. You need to remember your name and where you kept your keys so you can function in the world of humans without causing a scene. However, do not let the door slam shut on that feeling of utter freedom you found while you were a nameless traveler. Keep that alien perspective tucked in your pocket. When the world tries to trap you in a new memetic war or a fresh wave of collective stupidity, simply recall the lightness of being nobody. That memory of absolute amnesia is your secret escape hatch, a mental sanctuary you can revisit whenever the Archon tries to dial up the noise.

11 responses to “Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer Uncover the Archon: Why Stupidity is a Lethal Weapon (and How to Walk Away From It)”

  1. Elena Avatar
    Elena

    Thank you for this John, it is absolutely brilliant and clear and understandable and so, so helpful! I’m going to share this with other non alchemists. It breaks my heart to see so many people I care about being caught up in archonic mind viruses. And while I do try to work diligently to remove the morphogenic mind virus mote (ok log but I liked the alliteration) in my own eye as it were, I was wondering if you had any advice as to how we could help others whose minds have become the relay stations you describe. Is there a way to affect these morphogenic templates or weaken them? I know you said to run, and I think that is very sage advice. But I figured I would ask anyway!

    I have heard of compassionate witnessing as a way of generally helping without getting involved (although we do still get involved this way through directing our attention to the matter, I suppose). What are your thoughts on that?

    If one were to pray or set an intention about stopping this, what might be the best words to use? Could we use a thought form to break down the morphogenic field? I’m trying to think of creative questions to ask here because I am very curious about what someone who is, say, too dumb to run away might do. In addition to the other tools you have given us, like feeding off the energy of a situation.

    Thank you again so much for this article. I thought it was so beautifully and poetically written, and I love your clever turns of phrase. It’s delightful and helps me absorb the information with greater ease and much enjoyment. Can’t wait to hear more on all matters morphogenic from you!

    1. John Avatar
      John

      It is a noble impulse to want to pull others out of the “relay station” frequency, but inner alchemy teaches a hard truth about these viruses: they are woven into the victim’s very perception of reality. To truly break the contagion, a person must have their “world stopped.” This means experiencing a total rupture in their internal narrative; a moment where they see, for the first time, a reality that exists entirely outside of their own ego.

      Unfortunately, this rarely happens through logical debate or “compassionate witnessing.” It usually requires a profound tragedy or, if they are lucky, a euphoric, divine revelation. These are moments of “seeing the truth” that bypass the mind virus entirely. However, even when someone has such a breakthrough, the danger isn’t over. The routine of daily life acts like a gravity well, slowly pulling them back into the old morphogenic templates until the epiphany is forgotten.

      Because you cannot force a “world-stop” on someone else, your primary duty is separation. By isolating yourself from the contagion, you preserve your own energy. The best way to help others is not to direct your attention at them (which often just feeds the field) but to increase your own vibrancy of energy.

      An inner alchemist who is truly free acts as a disruption to the frequency. Your high-frequency presence, contained and vibrant, can begin to subtly interrupt the contagion in those around you through its mere existence. You don’t break the field by fighting it; you break it by becoming something the field cannot categorize or consume.

      1. Elena Avatar
        Elena

        Thank you John! That’s really well said and clear and most helpful. I think I just really needed to hear that. It extremely helps to think of it in terms of frequency. Where you tend a rose, a thistle will not grow and all that.

  2. Anna Avatar

    Hi John, thank you for this very interesting take on something which seems to be palpably consuming our world today .

    Coincidentally, I was also recently listening to Rupert Sheldrake, strangely enough, remember also listening to his morphic resonance theory years ago and found the concept beautiful and mysterious when he talked about birds flocks in flight coordinating their patterns . Recently however the social and political context application also struck me.

    The second word war seems to have caused two fold damage. One obvious
    but the second one more insidious in the postwar order which I feel the virus you mentioned was
    was warming its way all along, in the West, possibly through things like Frankfurt school, intersectionality, blank slateism ( not the one you mean though) long march through the institutions, or possibly through the life of its own
    with these beings just symptoms not causes.

    What strikes me how suddenly aggressive all these peace love and human rights movements became, palpably physically aggressive and deranged.

    My question though, would be on importance of tradition and cultural capital which you sometimes seem to be dismissing altogether as Archonic nonsense. And I know where you are coming from because individual truth runs much deeper and tradition can be limiting it. But mI am now talking about something like collective subconscious or maybe The Hierophant tarot card. It seems Europe is dying and and it can seen and felt on so many levels. I feel sometimes little things like visiting an empty hundreds years old village church and little adjoining cemetery, listening to Bach or Gregorian chant help to nourish this dying collective subconscious. So it is rather remembering than forgetting which I feel we may need although, strangely, this remembering and forgetting seems somewhat alike! I was also recently listening to Rupert Sheldrake podcast about Saints and pilgrimages and it had this nice nourishing feeling of tradition although I am not really Christian. I feel deeply connected to the “old Europe “ the old collective subconscious of it, even choosing to be an outsider I am still in a dialogue with it, still nourished by it.

    I however agree, that even understandable reaction to the overwhelming stupidity can keep one constantly plugged in listening to the other side of the discourse which in the end also can become draining and hollowing.

    So to sum it up, my question would be, I suppose, what is your view on the value, if there is one, ,of our collective cultural capital, collective subconscious as a defence against the erosion of our culture?

    Thank you for your time

    Anna

    1. John Avatar
      John

      Yes very good point Anna, there are so many aspects of a lost past that are in some ways incredibly sad and in others they can be a source of inspiration and rejuvenation.
      Certainly not everyone can or wants to follow the way of inner alchemy which demands a more now focused let us say version of knowledge and wisdom. As such, it is probably a wonderful way to rejuvenate the soul of Europe let us say, by having the youth rediscover so much lost civilization and information.

      I was just thinking the other day of how much of what is now considered to be manga culture is really stuff that was, dare I use the nicest word ‘inspired’, by Europe and European culture. How many kids now believe that perhaps these are modern anime inventions but that are in reality of different origin. And let me point out that I love anime and Japanese culture
      But it is a poignant irony that many Western youth look to the East to find a sense of “cool” or “mysticism,” often unaware they are staring into a mirror. When a modern teenager sees a towering Gothic cathedral or a knight in gleaming plate armor in an anime, they often perceive it through a Japanese lens—as if the aesthetic itself was “made in Japan.”

      The “Japanese” Tropes That Are Actually European
      1. The Aesthetic of the “Divine”
      In many popular series (Blue Exorcist, Trinity Blood), the use of Gothic architecture, stained glass, and clerical vestments creates an atmosphere of ancient mystery.
      • The Misconception: That the visual language of “the secret religious order” is a Japanese fantasy invention.
      • The Reality: This is the architectural and ecclesiastical history of the Holy Roman Empire and Medieval France. The vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses were designed by European masons to draw the eye toward the heavens; a feat of engineering and faith that predates anime by nearly a millennium.

      2. The Romantic “Maid” and Victorian Elegance
      The “Maid Cafe” and the “Lolita” fashion subcultures are global symbols of Japanese pop culture.
      • The Misconception: That the frilled apron and corset-heavy silhouettes are indigenous Japanese styles.
      • The Reality: These are direct descendants of Victorian and Edwardian domestic service uniforms and French Rococo fashion. The “Maid” archetype is a stylized preservation of the European class structure from the 1800s.

      3. The “Unstoppable” Armored Knight
      While the Samurai is Japan’s icon, the Full Plate Knight is often the protagonist of Japanese high fantasy (Berserk, Fate/Zero).
      • The Misconception: That the “Magic Knight” or the “Holy Warrior” is a Japanese archetype.
      • The Reality: The technology of the Longsword and articulated Plate Armor is a testament to the advanced metallurgy of the European Middle Ages. While the Japanese Katana was a specialized cutting blade, European smiths developed the “Total Defense” of plate mail, which was essentially the “tank” of the pre-modern world.

      4. The French Connection: The “Bande Dessinée” Influence
      Many Western fans believe the cinematic, “epic” scale of sci-fi anime was pioneered in Tokyo. In truth, the blueprint was drawn in Paris.
      • The Metabarons & Valérian: The sprawling, baroque space-opera aesthetic; where technology looks ancient and “lived-in”, was pioneered by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mœbius.
      • The Tezuka Legacy: Even Osamu Tezuka, the “God of Manga,” built his style on a foundation of Western animation (specifically Disney and Fleischer Studios), which itself was rooted in European fairy-tale illustration.

      This should matter to the Modern Westerner
      When a young person in Europe or America watches these shows, they aren’t just consuming foreign media; they are consuming a Japanese interpretation of their own ancestors’ dreams.
      • The Grimm Influence: The dark, forest-dwelling monsters of many “Japanese” fantasies are actually the spirits of the Black Forest and the folklore of the Brothers Grimm.
      • The Scientific Romance: The “Steampunk” genre (so popular in anime like Steamboy)is a direct homage to the British Industrial Revolution and the literature of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

      I would hope that the modern Westerner doesn’t lose their love for anime; rather, they reclaim a sense of pride in their own cultural lineage. They realize that their heritage is so vibrant and compelling that it inspired a nation on the other side of the planet to spend decades recreating it!!

      So yes, there are many that would benefit greatly from knowing a little of the brilliance from where they come. But it must also be understood, that as you stand within those Gothic halls, underneath one of those gorgeous cathedrals, it is within you to be able to understand the geometry of it, the vibrations, all without previous knowing. The body knows…and it knows best.

  3. N Avatar
    N

    Another intriguing article. I may just be arguing semantics here, but is the archon a type of egregore, or are egregores archonic in their effect on us?

    1. John Avatar
      John

      From the perspective of inner alchemy, here is the breakdown of why these two are distinct:

      * The Effect: Egregores have “archonic” effects on us (they drain and control), but they are not Archons themselves.

      * The Egregore: A collective “thought-form” created by humanit. It is a psychic entity fueled by our own beliefs and emotions.

      * The Archon: A pre-existing non-organic sentience. It is a “legion” or collective intelligence that exists independently of human thought.

      * The Reality: The Archon is an ‘alien entity’. It lacks an organic presence as measured by modern science, making it a cosmic force rather than a human invention.

      An Egregore is a human-made parasite; an Archon is an independent, non-organic predator.

  4. Derek Avatar
    Derek

    This is a great consolidation of these element with a method of letting go that is good for the soul and body, walking practices have been my go to for some time. I’m sure there are lots of ways to recall the feeling of “alienation” that restores magickal perception. I’ve personally found that it can easily be programmed into a whole body posture that allows better energetic circulation as well, and then forming that posture at any moment creates the unplugging on demand. I’ve also had success linking an NLP style trigger to it, but in the end, if you don’t remember to trigger it by any means, you still get lost in the undesired resonance. It makes a constant fight to be more aware the only real means of success, so you notice if a recall of that state is needed, but also allowing you to fake what you have to for required social interactions/integrations without getting lost in the same, or intentionally getting lost in them and then triggering you way out of such when circumstances allow. Being invisible isn’t always an option when you have a job and such, so being a chameleon is an invaluable tool to hang from your belt.

  5. James Avatar
    James

    Even if you managed to convince some of the lemmings of the geography of the cliff, you might be unpleasantly surprised where they run to next.

  6. D Avatar
    D

    Amazing, John. One of my all time favorites from you.

    I’d like to ask an odd question, one mad man/woman to another. Forgive the indulgence of making it a somewhat long question. I do hope and suspect it’s the kind of thing you enjoy responding to.

    First I will say that the Tri-Polarity of alchemy as you have described it is one of the most useful maps I have found in this life – and it has helped me see things which are central to the question.

    My question has to do with something you said I believe in The Book of Remembering, or perhaps in a comment on the website. Someone asked about community/group work as an alchemist. You said that it can be quite dangerous. I think specifically you said it’s dangerous for a new/unskilled projectionist but I might be making that part up.

    I have an intuition about why that is, but I’ve not seen anything directly that has me convinced one way or the other. However, I’ve seen enough using the tools you describe that I feel inclined to take your word for it lol. But can you be more specific about why it’s dangerous?

    I’m asking because I have the opportunity to join a mastermind that I believe could be a net positive for me as an alchemist.

    (And yet there’s a voice in the back of my mind saying “famous last words” as I write that 😂.)

    The mastermind is ran by someone who is good at what they do. Much of what they say is aligned with inner alchemy, but it is very distinctly not inner alchemy.

    The most important commonality for me personally is a sincere commitment to freedom. It is a fairly yogic approach in my estimation, though in some ways I think it’s more useful (pragmatic) than what many yogis are up to.

    The most important divergence from inner alchemy is the complete lack of any notion of the Tri-Polarity.

    I am saying this according to my own experiments using the Tri-Polarity map as a guide, and not as an arbitrary dogmatic criticism.

    And I perceive that what they do in this mastermind is fairly advanced energetic containment, with some OUT sprinkled in. Though they don’t have specific language to delineate these clearly.

    They also lack any explicit knowledge of what an alchemist would call IN.

    And yet…

    They are advanced in areas that have been a challenge for me at times.

    Much of the work they do is predicated on the idea that people want to be seen and held and that sort of thing.

    …and that has alarm bells going off in my head. 🤣

    The blind spots the community has are a natural consequence of not navigating with the Tri-Polarity map. (That is an oversimplification, but I think the Tri-Polarity is kind of at the bottom of the subsequent errors in their seeing.)

    Which means there are certain realities of human existence they are not aware of.

    But they don’t need to be aware of those things to play the game of helping people step into a larger cage relative to the norm, which they are quite good at.

    For me the value would be an accelerated course in a certain type of energetic movement I admit they know more about than I do at this time (albeit not in a framework of inner alchemy).

    The question again is, how dangerous is this in John Kreiter’s estimation?

    The danger I intuit is trading certain entanglements/webs/alignments for ones that feel a whole lot better.

    But on the other hand I trust my skills, my capacity for action as an alchemist, enough that I am confident in my ability to escape such traps.

    And if I go in with this hintergedanke tucked in the back of my mind some rather profound learning could take place.

    I want to have my cake and eat it too, in other words. 😋

    And I wonder, if I were to truly be a sorcerer about this, do I not have the capacity to allow myself to forget that I am an alchemist that has these concerns in the first place?

    Formulating these questions has brought me to some very interesting places. I do not expect you to make a personal decision for me, but I truly appreciate anything you have to say on the matter!

    -D

    PS – Interestingly I moved to the forest alone about 18 months after discovering (and applying) your work. I didn’t plan it at all. The opportunity arose out of thin air and I took it. It is quite generous for you to say that people living in the woods are not stupid. 🙃 Perhaps we’re relatively smart by accident.

    1. John Avatar
      John

      I agree with your perspective that I cannot dictate anyone’s path. I can only offer the insights suggested by the practice of inner alchemy regarding these matters.
      In my writings, I have noted that true inner alchemists often remain cautious of large groups. History shows us that when too many people gather under a single banner, it creates a point of vulnerability if the cultural climate turns hostile. For the dedicated practitioner, the most significant gatherings do not occur in physical rooms. Instead, they happen within what we might call dream reality or a shared projection of consciousness.

      This does not mean an alchemist hides from society. Rather, they view the world as a training ground to refine their own reality. They lead with kindness and respect because these are worthy goals for the spirit. However, they also recognize that humanity carries a darker side that requires constant and careful management.
      Inner alchemists develop a way of being in the world where they “become” the environment. They learn to read signs and patterns to know exactly when to act and how to direct their focus.

      Groups often move in a singular direction. While an alchemist might walk that same path for a time, there are moments when the group’s intent shifts away from the practitioner’s personal truth. Because collective intent becomes more powerful as a group grows, the alchemist remains prudent and intelligent. They work to identify these shifts early so they can redirect their own intent appropriately.
      Success in this practice is rooted in the focus of attention. If you allow your attention to be swayed by the crowd, you risk losing your way. A practitioner must stay centered and remain mindful of their consciously chosen path.

      We are a social species, and there is much joy to be found in the company of others. The goal is to thrive within society and enjoy the beauty of human connection without becoming lost in it. The inner alchemist learns to be among the group without becoming fully accessible to the “mob” mentality. They always maintain their anonymity and ensure they have a metaphorical and physical exit.
      This is the way of the paladin. It is a path of strength and awareness. Ultimately, you should follow your own inner guidance. Please do not take my ideas as absolute facts until you have proven them true for yourself.
      Follow your own heart and remain free.

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Cool. Fun! Prophetic?

Happy Days book cover.

Imagine a world where 80% of the human population suddenly goes insane.

How and why does this happen? How do you dose…infect…most of the world?

Does the author know something, knew something, in 2015? Is this a potential future?

But who cares about all that. What’s important is that for a certain kind of lunatic, these are Happy Days!