Have you noticed The Shimmer today?

Do you know how many times you've checked your phone since waking? I've been awake for 2 hours and I think I'm close to 10.

The average 18 to 34 year old checks their phone 100-200 times a day. And those are the numbers we see when people know they're being monitored. These are the best case numbers. The true numbers are worse.

One of my insights from my last darkness retreat was that, in order to see the story I'm called to tell, I have to learn how to write horror.

Not the cheap kind, the transcendental kind. The kind that can look at the dark light of God without lying to itself.

Stephen King's 'The Stand' called to me. The moment I got out of the darkness I started listening to that 50 hour long audiobook.

A good horror story tells more of the truth than any of our other favorite story forms. John Wick is more a lie than The Shining.

The Stand is a great horror story. What I've learned from King is, a good horror story walks us through the wicked, sadistic, tormented, and violated, all while holding a soft hum that the true, the good, and the beautiful is with us, as we walk through the 'father why hath thou forsaken me's.

Good horror helps the modern psyche bridge the chasm between God and Evil.

Since emerging from the darkness and seeping my consciousness in good horror, I've recently realized why I've been called to it.

It helps wake me up.

Wake up from what? From the somnambulism of modernity; that we are chanced creatures in a chanced universe, that all meaning is relative, that souls are fictions, and that even though this is the story we're told; consumerism is our prophet, that if we just consume more, more money, more influence, a larger house, a larger community, that we won't die.

Horror helps me wake up from the tragedy of living this one precious life lullabied by such a shitty story.

I've known for about a year now that the most important thing for me to start doing, that if I started doing, everything in my life would come together, was to meditate.

What I've noticed is that I've needed a steady drip of good horror to wake me up enough so that I would finally begin to meditate again.

Steven Pressfield talks about Resistance, and how, like a force of nature, that task which we feel the most resistance to is the task our soul most wants us to do.

For me, it is meditating. Something in me knows that meditating will be the triggering habit that will begin to dissolve this current iteration of the Erick avatar I'm playing with.

So naturally, this iteration of the Erick avatar has done everything he can to keep us from meditating.

The kind of meditating I'm talking about isn't the mindfulness type we might dabble in to reduce stress. The momentum I feel myself pulled towards is the kind of meditation that eventually, permanently, undos the illusory fusion we each have with our identities.

But the clarity is worth the death of my identity, because studying horror has helped me notice with a little more clarity our collective situation.

The tough truth is; we all can feel our culture is tumbling inside a malignant momentum towards potential extinction. We know we have souls, and that those souls issue us a calling, a dharma.

And yet...we eat food we know injures us. We spend hours of our days unconsciously scrolling. We allow drama and 'good enough' intimate relationships to chew up our minds. We won't admit we're addicted to porn, online shopping, our phones, reality television, alcohol, cannabis, ketamine; but most of all, we're addicted to our stories that convince us its selfish or egotistical, or cringe to live a life believing your calling can help save the world.

Well, you could help save the world (at least your world, which is an important part of the world).

And all of our numbing is the evidence of this world redeemer cloistered inside us.

The bigger the call, the deeper the sedation.

How asleep are you?

How many times have you checked your phone today?

Oh you don't know?

Horror is helping me wake up.

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PS. Thanks to horror, for the first time in seven years, I'm meditating everyday, between 20 and 40 minutes. Haven't missed a day in a week, and I'm gunna do my best not to become the dude who only talks about meditation now that he's done it for a week.

Aaaand I still might become that dude lol.

We'll see.

Song I'm Listening to on Repeat​

Unpopular take: J Cole apologizing to Kdot for the diss is the most developmentally healthy thing we've seen from the top of hip-hop maybe ever, and fans just arn't ready for it yet. I'm still bumpin this everyday.

Death Artist Highlight:

I was invited to be a part of one of the most creative projects I've ever heard of, by the incredible artist Jon Marro. Check out his truly unique documentary here.

In the wake of my obsession with the Shimmer, Jon's art feels prophetic.

I suppose time will tell.

A Call For Support:

A close friend is moving through a breast cancer diagnoses, and given our medical infrastructure, her bills are mounting. If you feel the call and have the means, join me in donating.​