In between family emergencies, I'm making pretty good progress on my next book, titled Entheogenic Fitness Training: An Open-Source System for Becoming an Optimized Human Being, the Soteriological Event that Results in Functional Enlightenment, and the Cure for Anxiety, Depression, and Loneliness, by Dammitˣ, a Shamanic Superhero.
It's a perfectly accurate title that is also an elaborate joke. If you don't get it, I don't know what to tell you.
Anyway, I just worked up a high-level outline of the concepts it describes. Hopefully it'll help me keep things organized. Unfortunately, this is probably going to be a BIG book, at least 400 pages, maybe more.
The Principle
The collective wisdom of all spiritual traditions can be boiled down to a single instruction: RELAX.
Being relaxed is the optimal way to be human
It allows you to respond rather than react, which is to say, act mindfully rather than mindlessly.
Some situations in life call for detachment
Others call for engagement
Either way, the optimal response to any given situation is archetypal, meaning it is self-evident, effortless, and promotes the highest human good, or "eudaemonia"
Relaxation is based on trust.
Ultimate trust is trust that the Divine has a Plan that leads to universal eudaemonia.
Ultimate trust feels just like being in love--like every happy ending in the world is true, and all the suffering it took to get you to this point was more than worth it.
Feeling like this supports all activities
It is the "why" that makes possible any how
Trust in the Divine can be developed by training for "entheogenic fitness."
Entheogenic fitness is the psychospiritual equivalent of physical fitness
Like physical fitness, it has objective qualities (what you're able to do) and subjective qualities (how it feels to be able to do those things)
Entheogenic fitness is the measure of your ability to accomplish goals while under psychic load
Psychic load can be negative or positive
Negative psychic load is Resistance that discourages the realization of your highest potential
Positive psychic load is Libido that promotes the realization of your highest Self
N.B. Runaway Libido becomes a form of Resistance called Inflation
Libido and Resistance are complementary. Like exertion and gravity are indispensable for increasing muscular strength, both are necessary to the process of increasing entheogenic fitness.
Accomplishing goals while under psychic load has three aspects:
Relaxation
Concentration
Deep engagement
Relaxed concentration coupled with deep engagement is often referred to as "flow state"
Your ability to engage these aspects is a function of your entheogenic fitness relative to the level of psychic load
As psychic load increases, the definition of "accomplish goal" may shift from "successful completion of intended tasks" to "not quitting attempts to complete tasks" to "surviving"
The Method
In our universe, nothing comes for free; the ability to relax under any conditions requires effortful and disciplined practice.
Entheogenic fitness can be efficiently developed with Entheogenic Fitness Training (EFT).
EFT has three Components: Antifragility, Executive Function, and Gnosis.
Antifragility builds the ability to relax
Executive Function improves your ability to concentrate.
Gnosis expands engagement
In EFT, these Components are developed in the context of a role-playing game called PhonomancerTM.
PhonomancerTM establishes a paracosm, which is to say, a detailed world of Make-Believe where cadets can gather to share experiences designed to be personally and socially transformative.
The PhonomancerTM paracosm includes an instruction manual called "Entheogenic Fitness Training."
This text explains the theory and principles of EFT and its components, including detailed explanations of the training Elements used to develop Components.
Some of these Elements develop a single Component, and others improve multiple Components.
"Entheogenic Fitness Training" explains how to develop the capacities and abilities of a Phonomancer.
A Phonomancer who someone who uses phonomancy experience Gnosis.
Phonomancy is a technique for entering visionary trance by singing and dancing along to popular recorded music while in a psychedelically-altered state of consciousness.
Phonomancy takes place in the context of phonomantic rites, which are sequenced acts of phonomancy programmed in an order that can result in catharsis.
A phonomantic rite staged as elaborate participatory theater is known as an "entheotrainment."
Entheotrainments are scalable group psychospiritual fitness classes that allow participants to test and develop their entheogenic fitness while striving to create shared Gnosis.
Working with others can amplify and intensify available experiences.
Sharing experiences can also serve as the foundation for communitas, or social bonding, that makes it easier to anchor peak experiences into your everyday life.
When playing PhonomancerTM yields those up-close-and-personal experiences of the Divine called Gnosis, the reality of which is supported by the belief of your community, Make-Believe becomes reality.
Gnosis is, by definition, transformative, as it plants seed ideas that grow into an expanded reality.
Entheotrainments are led by phonomancers who have achieved visionary virtuosity.
These ceremony-leading phonomancers model for participants how to engage with entheotrainments to improve entheogenic fitness.
Visionary virtuosity is an advanced form of entheogenic fitness.
Both phonomantic rites and entheotrainments impose various stressors (dosage, environmental, task-based) that provide the psychic loads--that is, Resistance--trainees must engage and overcome via attempts at relaxation.
The Goal
As EFT advances, the Resistance encountered becomes stronger and stronger, until it seems (and is) demonic, which is to say, archetypal. Persevering in the face of these seemingly insurmountable threat requires an understanding of ultimate outcome of EFT for you and all humanity.
Supreme entheogenic fitness manifests as a ne plus ultra spiritual state called "Functional Enlightenment"
As a level of human development, Functional Enlightenment is both Maslovian self-actualization and Jungian individuation.
It elevates individuation into a soteriological event, an ongoing state of communion with the archetypal Self.
This state is achieved via absolute trust in the Divine, which is to say, perfect relaxation.
This absolute trust is obtained by disidentifying with the ego-body and recollecting your true nature as an incarnated spirit who is a fractal image of a Higher Self.
This "identideification" floods the psyche with numinous energy
This energy is constrained and channeled via the Functionally Enlightened individual's aesthetic choices, an ability granted by a fully self-actualized, hypertrophied ego structure.
In the context of PhonomancerTM, a person who can superconduct these numinous energies into the world for the benefit of others is regarded as a Christ.
You play PhonomancerTM to develop your version of its titular character, which is to say, your unique Christ identity.
In the PhonomancerTM paracosm, the Divine Plan is the establishment of an interstellar civilization populated by ten billion functionally-enlightened individuals who are each a fully realized and unique Christ.
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