Talking with author, Jasun Horsley, on navigating the first and second Matrix, mirror neurons and telepathic messages, goats and autonomy, spiritual seeking and self-invention, the pitfalls of psychedelics, Castaneda and the shamanic path, the challenges of building groups, conspiratainment and discernment, the search for authentic connection, the art of writing as a tool for connecting to the soul, the tensions of identity and integration, autism as lens for deeper substrata, Dostoevsky and embodying the psyche, the limits of knowledge and the beauty of not knowing, the bi-directionality of communication, making the ethereal tangible, sending beacons of lightness in the dark ocean of human experience, the Manopticon, Children of Job, clearing the bush on the pathless path and more.
Excerpts
“Changing the world … to me… is a red herring and a really bad idea, the desire to change it. I don't see any evidence that the world changes. I think it just proceeds along certain tracks”
“The thing about discernment is, as I've said a number of times recently, You don't need to believe anything in order to know what to do…Like we can guided by something other than belief. And that would then include knowledge. Because knowledge is, a lot of knowledge is belief. There's some knowledge that's not.”
“If I find the right words, I will actually kind of midwife that insight into conscious awareness….I'm trying to make something unconscious conscious using language to do it.”
“ If we want to know ourselves, it's not enough just to study ourselves, you know, self examination, said Socrates, but that's not, that's not sufficient for knowing oneself. Right? We need to actually be seen by others and then see what others are seeing in us by the dialogues.
“Having a dialogue with one's soul isn't just about writing or talking to oneself. It's about talking to others and connecting to others at a deep level so that they will mirror back to us the state of our soul or the phase that our souls are in or whatever our souls are trying to let into our awareness or bring into our awareness. That's all, that all depends on some sort of group dynamic.“
“ I'm trying to send out beacons…fire beacons into the sky and hope that somebody who's out there floating on the dark ocean… shipwrecked, will see it and swim in this direction.”
Interview Time Stamps:
00:26 Introduction
Introducing Jasun Horsley and the themes of spiritual seeking, writing, and navigating deeper realities.05:21 Preserving the Future and Projects
Jasun discusses his “Land Made Man” project in Galicia and the importance of creating spaces for refuge and connection.11:43 Spiritual Path and Writing Journey
From shamanism to physical work in the “real world”, Jasun traces his spiritual and creative evolution.22:41 The Second Matrix and Spiritual Seeking
Examining the traps of spiritual seeking and the illusion of escaping societal conditioning.26:15 Early Wake-Up Calls and Castaneda's Influence
Jasun recounts his first transformative experiences and their connection to Castaneda’s teachings.37:30 Discernment and Belief Systems
Jasun discusses the importance of skepticism and the dangers of misplaced beliefs.45:43 Conspiratainment and Distractions
Exploring the allure and pitfalls of conspiracy theories and their role in modern culture.01:14:53 Autism and Perception
The link between autism and deeper, more open engagement with reality.01:30:03 Sending Beacons - Challenges of Social Connection
The struggle to find authentic connections and the hope of finding kindred souls.01:46:44 The Role of Mentorship
Discussing the complexities of teaching/mentoring/modeling01:50:11 Filmmaking, Groups, Future Projects
Jasun reflects on his film The Light of Dead Stars, the joy of teamwork, and aspirations for creative collaborations.
Links:
Children of Job by Jasun Horsley
Opening Song: "Freight Train" by Elizabeth Cotten / Cover by Aaron Sheppard
Interview Transcript
(I recommend listening to the conversation as the medium is the message - but for those visual learners here is a transcript. Please note: Apologies in advance for minor transcription errors and inaccuracies.)
Teaser
Jasun: I'm just always trying, well, not always trying, but whenever there's an opportunity, I'm trying to send out beacons, you know, fire beacons into the sky and hope that somebody who's out there floating on the dark ocean, you know, shipwrecked, will see it and swim in this direction.
Introduction
Leafbox: So Jason, how are you today physically?
Jasun: How am I today physically? Pretty good. I've had a hard day because I had to clean out the goat's hut, which is a foul job and even though it only takes about an hour and a half, it's quite intense.
And I just had a walk before this. So I'd say I'm feeling pretty good in my body. Thanks for asking.
Leafbox: It's funny. I was going to ask how the goats were. So how are they?
Jasun: They're good. I don't know if we're on record now. I mean, it's, everything's on record as far as I'm concerned, but I was recently was decided more or less to find a new home for Michken.
And I, I know somebody who has a shelter animal shelter and they had, she has goats, they have goats. So I called to say, would it be all right and explain why. And she said, yes. And since then, it's been about a week, since then he hasn't really been escaping or causing trouble. So it's almost as though he knows.
So yeah, I've had a bit of a hiatus really, you know, like several days of me not having to lose my shit over the goats causing trouble.
Leafbox: It's funny. I wonder if he's reading your mirror neurons.
Jasun: Yeah.
Leafbox: If he can feel your telepathic messages.
Jasun: Yeah, I mean, I did, I did plan to talk to him and say, look, this is, this, this is the deal.
But obviously I know he doesn't speak English or human verbal language, so maybe I just didn't need to. Maybe he just picked it up, I don't know, but anyway, he, he is behaving currently and of course I'm in two minds about getting rid of the alpha goat who's my own familiar, but at the same time I'd, I'd rather he was happy and not have me on his case the whole time and vice versa, him on my case.
Leafbox: So, Jason, why don't we jump in? Are you ready to dive in?
Jasun: Yeah, I'm ready when you are.
Leafbox: Well, thank you so much for agreeing to this. Yeah, I had a lot of challenge to prepare for this interview. I didn't know how to approach it, and I thought with your usual style, I would be more liminal. So, just go with the flow.
And one of the random things I did is I just went to my bookshelf, and I grabbed a book.
This book, Dahlgren. I don't know if you've read it.
Jasun: No,
Questions from Dhalgren and Meta Narratives
Leafbox: and I just randomly opened it and one of the first questions that I saw in the book is, what do you want to change in the world?
What do you want to preserve? What is the thing you're searching for and what are you running away from? So maybe we'll start with Dhalgren, and that's the question.
Jasun: That's a, that's a bunch of questions packed together. Why that book? What is it?
Leafbox: Dhalgren is an interesting book. It's about a place called Bellona. It's by Samuel Delaney, which is a very controversial science fiction writer.
And it's about this kid, he's named the Kid, who goes to this city called Bellona, which is this post apocalyptic nowhere place. It's almost like The Zone, and it's an adventure in this place. But it's really a meta narrative about Because he's writing the book as he's in it, so it's a, it's very self aware and it's about, it has an opening line that's very good.
It says, you confuse the truth and the real and the whole book is like what's real what's not telepathy So it perfectly fits in with what you're writing about in what this search
Jasun: Yeah, and why did you pick it up before today then before right before now?
Leafbox: Well, I I was really interested in meta narrative.
And as I'm getting more into writing, there's this whole self creation process as you, as you know, you've been writing about as you create a narrative or you start writing, trying to connect to what the true self is, but there's this disconnect between as you're writing itself creating. So it's the same as in the world.
The Kid is creating this world as he's going through it, but you never really can get in touch with that. So there's this conflict and this interaction. And as I write, I try to get really It just, it feels like it comes from nowhere that you know, but then it's also coming from everywhere that you've, every experience you've had is this soup that builds into what you're writing about.
Jasun: Right, so you picked it up hoping to get some inspiration today.
Leafbox: Well, I used it as bibliomancy for you, like just, let's see how to approach this interview.
Jasun: Right, so, but you happened to open a page that had some questions on it.
Well, my technique was look for a question. So I opened the page and I said, look for a question.
And that was the first question I saw. So I was like, wow, this is specific. And I think that might fit into your life project.
Leafbox: Right. Yeah. Okay, which still seems fairly unlikely. I mean fairly lucky or what have you that you hit on. Particularly that first question, because that's one I'm addressing quite a lot.
Preserving the Future and Projects
Jasun: What would you change about the world?
Leafbox: Well, that one I, I would have never come up with that question myself, which is a good one. Maybe I'd ask, what are you searching for, but what do you want to preserve? It's a harder question to come to.
Jasun: That's a, that's a more interesting question, yeah, because I've, I've talked quite a lot on my own podcast about how changing the world is, to me, is a red herring and a really bad idea, the desire to change it.
I don't see any evidence that the world changes. I think it just proceeds along certain tracks, but then it raises the question of what is the world and we could get really sidetracked by that, so let's not. So preserve, what do I want to preserve?
Well, I suppose I do have a And it does make me think about the future, of course, which I, even though I'm an Aries, if that means anything to you or the listeners, I'm sure it'll mean something. Aries do tend to be future oriented, the first sign in the zodiac. And I am quite future oriented in a number of ways.
And I'm always starting things. I'm always starting projects. Fortunately, I finish them. I got some, if it was just Aries, I wouldn't maybe finish the things I start, but I almost always finish things when I start. So currently, the my main project is, is this. This land and this property and goats, animals, vegetables, and I think of it more in terms of just a spiritual exercise for me to engage myself in matter and in physical reality with an eye towards the likelihood, the likely future that society is going to become, and maybe very quickly in 2025, seems to have been fast tracked, maybe, it's a little early to say, but I was just reading about Donald Trump's, pretty much one of his first moves in office was this Stargate thing the enforcement of digital IDs and digital nanotech vaccines and all the rest of it of course I'm thinking I might actually need this.
This refuge for myself. So that is future oriented, but that's, that's secondary to just wanting to be engaged in the present. And then much more future oriented is I have a niece and I presume that people will live after I die. Like I won't live to see the complete end of the human species. And so I want, I do want to preserve, I want to, to build something here that, that will preserve.
a piece of, or a, an area of, or a space of refuge for others, for myself and my wife and the animals and, and family members, all two of them but, but also for others. I don't think about it and certainly I don't talk about it much because it doesn't seem really necessary or helpful, as I say, I've got enough just dealing with the day to day and I'm not, I don't.
I don't want to put pressure on myself, like I've got to get this done by such and such a time. So, anyway, it was a very long winded answer, unfortunately, but it has to do with wanting to preserve what is natural and what is good. Within the, within society, because we can't be completely separate from society.
Everything I'm doing is, is in society or in the world, if you prefer. So preserving that and preserving a felt connection to, to the soul. I think that that's, that's would be a much more direct answer, but I think it probably did need some context and that very much depends on having a safe space, not in the current trendy use of that term, as in the space where you won't be triggered, but literally a safe space where you won't be, you know, whisked away by the local law enforcement and, and tied down and have some sort of you know, gene technology forced into your bloodstream or whatever else is coming down the pike.
Journey to Galicia, Spain
Leafbox: Jason, could you give us a little bit of context of where you are, where this land project is, and maybe for people who don't know your other work, who you are and what you do, and maybe what you've been searching for across, I guess, 40 years or 50 years.
Jasun: Yeah, I'm 57, so I guess I started Searching consciously around 20 , 21, something like that. So that's what's that, 35 years roughly. So I'm in Galicia, Spain. Currently I moved from Canada, British Columbia around the time of the pandemic, or the scam demic, or the plan demic, or whatever we're going to call it, began.
But that wasn't what motivated me and my wife to choose to move, we'd already decided on it before that shit show unfolded. And in Canada I was working, we were running a thrift store that we owned which was very demanding but very rewarding. And so the idea was to have some land and try and become self sufficient over the next 10 years or something. And that's what are we, 2025. So we've been here about four years. So I don't know if we're behind schedule, but definitely not ahead of schedule. What I've been doing in the meantime for the last 35 years is mostly traveling, reading, writing, and trying to get to the bottom of things.
In countless different ways, like trying pretty much everything, like for, it was a period of my life where I had a stomach ulcer. I think I didn't even know it for, for a couple of years, but eventually it was diagnosed, but I had constant digestive problems. And I, I, I tried absolutely everything that I could think of that.
I even ate a raw snail when I had a raw snail, cured ulcers, kefir. I don't even remember now, just as an example my, my process very much has been trial and error.
Spiritual Path and Writing Journey
Jasun: So as a, on, on the spiritual path, for lack of a better term, I started out with shamanism via Castaneda and, and that sort of expanded into psychedelic occultism inevitably.
And ended up with more conventional spiritual seeking and finally it ended up with a much more practical approach, which was taking on physical tasks as a way to enact some interior internal process. So house renovations running a thrift store and now husbanding animals and carpentry and things like this.
So, so that's been my trajectory as far as a spiritual seeker goes. And I've been writing consistently through that. Like I started writing at about 14 or something or less, younger even. And I've never stopped writing. I've even tried. From time to time to stop, I never succeeded. And so in, in that period, from when I first got published at 30, writing about film, because that's been another preoccupation is film, making films, wanting to make films, and watching films, and writing about films.
So since then, since 1999, I've published, I don't know, about 12 books or something like that. And as well as doing a lot of online stuff, podcasts and things. So I'm a communicator primarily in this regard, and I've always wanted to bring people together. Like I'm still struggling with that, still struggling with finding the right way or the effective way to bring people together.
Because I, it just seems that it should extend. Writing is a solitary thing. Could say it's a lonely pursuit. But I don't consider it lonely, but it's definitely solitary. So, for me, writing has always been, I think, looking back with hindsight, it's always been the means to connect to others out there.
To find and connect to the others with whom I would have affinity and with whom I could work together on a shared project. Towards this mysterious goal of finding out what we are and why we're here and where we're going.
Leafbox: We had your latest line, I think, in your latest sub stack was a dialogue with the self, a dialogue with the soul.
So you're always trying to connect to your soul and others. So, yeah, interesting.
Jasun: Well, I juxtapose the self with the soul, whereas in the, the self or the identity is, is not to be trusted, whereas the soul is to be trusted. So we have to choose where our allegiance goes.
Leafbox: Going back to the concept of collapse, I want to go back to that, but just on a general note, what's your writing process like?
Do you write in the morning, at night, just randomly? What's your actual physical process of writing? Because writing is a very physical act.
Jasun: Yeah, and it varies. Okay, so, ideally, or most consistently, I will, I will write by hand. And if I'm going to write by hand, obviously a notebook and a pen, but it has to be the right kind of pen.
You don't have, you're not going to use the video, but for your benefit, these are the only pens I write with, the hi tech, this is product placement now, hi tech points. They're fairly well known, these pens, I see them in movies and things like that, and they're beautiful to write with, they're just really smooth flowing.
So it's very important to me, like, writing is a sensory act. You might not think that most people might not think that, but of course it is everything as we do physically. So, yeah, nice notebook with no lines on the page, the right pen, and a comfortable place, warm. So I will write in bed, or if it's, if it's summertime or springtime, outside in the sun.
Most important thing is that I'm as physically comfortable as possible, so that my attention isn't being distracted, so I'm as relaxed as possible in order to receive inspiration, if you like. So that's factor one. Mostly I write non fiction, so that might, it might go hand in hand with reading. Like I might have a book that I'm reading and I read for a while and that stirs up thoughts and I write it down.
Also walking, which apparently Nietzsche did to get his ideas. I find I can have a lot of ideas when I'm walking, so I'll carry a notebook and scribble them down, you know, every few minutes. That's fairly common. More recently, I've been writing in a very different way, which is I'm writing directly onto the computer, which is very rare for me, generally speaking, not counting emails. And it's this series that you've been reading at the Children of Job. What I'm doing there is I'm rewriting it, but then I'm having ideas while I'm doing it, because I found that this piece is quite dense, there's a lot of stuff in there that can be unpacked.
And so I'm, I'm just writing stuff down fresh when I get inspired as I'm rewriting it. And so the piece is getting bigger and bigger, and that's fairly unusual for me to write that way.
Leafbox: Going back to my first question from Dhalgren. In terms of what you're searching for, your writing process is an attempt to find what you're searching for, right?
So what are some of the main topics that you've been searching and seeing over 35 years that you've been writing?
Jasun: Well I think the first writing I did was actually fiction. I'm pretty sure it was, not counting school, obviously. I think I wrote science fiction, a little bit, just a little bit, a little bit of science fiction, a little bit of horror.
Because it was the first things I was reading besides children's books were horror, James Herbert, The Rats and The Fog and Penn, Book of Horror Stories, things like that. Even Roald Dahl's adult stuff was quite horror oriented. So the very first writing I did was fiction, but there was very little. Just three or four pieces when I was about 10, something like that. Then when I, when I started writing more in earnest, it was time I got a typewriter. My mother bought me a typewriter. It was after I'd become infatuated with film. And so I was right. I started writing scripts. And little mini film reviews.
I was also writing poetry around this time by hand and doodling. So I guess I was writing by hand from a fairly young age. But that wasn't, I didn't transcribe that stuff. Then I think, just trying to think, I think I was only focused on film until I was Twenty. I'm pretty sure, as far as writing goes, unless I'm forgetting something.
And what happened briefly at twenty was that I had this experience of of disappointment with this woman that I met and because I was distressed I went to see an astrologer and he recommended Carlos Castaneda. Once I read Carlos Castaneda, things opened up to me and I thought I've got to find out more about this. But I was already opening up in this way in terms of like what's really going on and so the first piece I wrote that wasn't about film and wasn't just these short stories, was a, was very similar in start of the stuff right now.
It was a kind of social analysis of the situation we're in collectively combined with a spiritual kind of not solution exactly, but let's just keep it simple, the spiritual solution to the political, the socio political problem of the world. But it was very raw, like it was only 20 it was about 20 or 30 pages. And so since then, that did set a kind of template because since that time, since the age of 20.
I have basically written always about either film and by extension, you know, the culture, culture of film and popular culture in general, or I've written about society in its deeper, darker aspects with an occult slash metaphysical slash spiritual lens. So that has included a lot of focus on conspiracies, machinations of hidden factions in the world and things like UFOs I got very interested in. Secret societies, occult rituals, satanic ritual abuse. I think I've covered most of the things there that have recurred throughout this 35 years of writing. These, these are the themes and these are the subjects that recur.
Understanding consciousness would be, if you throw that in, that's very broad, like understanding language is another thing I write about a lot. To me, they all, they're all complimentary, but to somebody who isn't familiar with the whole work over the years, they might think that I keep jumping around from one thing to the next.
And I suppose I do. But to me it's always the same, I'm on the same trail, I'm just, you know, different scent, I go off down this way, and then if I, either I catch something or I don't, and then follow the next scent, so I don't really follow a path.
Leafbox: But you're on a trail though, so I keep trying to get back to what is this trail that you're searching for, what's at the end of the trail,
Jasun: I mean, I won't know that until I get to the end of the trail, but it has to do with the simplest thing of all, know thyself, understanding myself by understanding the world. So yeah, I mean, I didn't mention psychology as well. That's, that's massively important in why I write a psychological lens and even, you know, referring to and writing about psychology, Freud, Jung, René Girard.
So yeah, if I said I'm searching for the truth, that would be like to say nothing, like it's too broad, isn't it? But so then you say, well, the truth of what? So I say the truth of myself. And I can't separate myself from the world that has shaped me and imprinted me. So I would say that my, my compulsion or my drive to understand the world and what it consists of and how it operates and how it functions and the harm that it does to human beings Include and somehow all mixed up with pop culture and movies, which I'm not saying they're just harmful, but they are harmful as well as potentially helpful.
That's all mixed in there because that was my first real preoccupation as a writer. The, it's consistent with the goal to understand who am I and what am I separate from the world.
The Second Matrix and Spiritual Seeking
Leafbox: Which brings me back to the quote, I keep thinking about the quote in Dhalgren about confusing the truth and the real.
And I think that has to do with your, one of the things I really like about your work is that. You know, you open, you have this quote or line, you know, the second matrix, which maybe you can explain, you break away the first matrix, you take the red pill or the blue pill or whatever it is, and get into the second world of darker conspiracies.
But then you realize that behind that there's a second matrix and so on.
Jasun: So, yeah, you are in the second matrix. And it's not just dark conspiracies because somebody could become a spiritual seeker. And they would also then be in the second matrix, even though they're just all new age light, you know, fluffy clouds.
So it doesn't have to be dark stuff, but it's apparently a deeper layer. So if somebody leaves their family and their job and they join a spiritual group and that becomes their family and so on, to them they think they've found their real place in the world and their real trajectory and maybe they have, but chances are they haven't and chances are that when the people around them say they've joined a cult, they're not entirely wrong.
Like chances are that person is either going to find out that they have joined a cult without realizing it or worse still that they're never going to admit it and then just become recruiters for some cult where abuse is going on. So that's like a literal illustration of first and second matrix. Like ordinary society is, is the, is matrix one, the cult, the spiritual cult is matrix two.
And the person who's joined the cult, or the person who's got into spiritual seeking, or shamanism, or occultism, or paranoid awareness, conspiracy research, or whatever else it might be, there's lots of wings in the second matrix. They are further, they are closer to the truth than if they stayed in the first matrix and they have at least made the transition to questioning things.
At the same time, they're potentially more trapped because they have this, they have this sense that they have found out the difference between illusion and reality. And so they might stop seeking. They might still think they're seeking, but essentially they think that they've found, right? And since they're in a cult, they think they've found it.
So that's, that tends to be what happens. And now, you could say that's what makes the second matrix a second matrix. If you're still moving through it, then you're not necessarily because that first red pill quote unquote experience it could be enough. Like if you really pay attention, you realize I was completely convinced that that was the way the world is.
And then I realized it wasn't. Therefore, this could be happening again. I could also, if you maintain that awareness, then say you're not exactly in the second matrix, but it's paradox because the fact that you know, you're in the second matrix indicates that you're not. Exactly in the second matrix, but you certainly know you haven't found your way out of you haven't found your way to the truth in that you can't trust any of these interpretations.
It's just that they are closer to usually, maybe not always. They're usually closer to the mainstream consensus view of things, closer to the truth rather.
Leafbox: So Jason, what was your first I hate to use the red pill term, but what broke you through the first matrix, and then, are you still in the second matrix, or have you passed through that, or what matrix are you in, or what stage are you in now, back to the land, I guess?
Early Wake-Up Calls and Castaneda's Influence
Jasun: There's only two matrices, as far as I, in my model, yeah, because people, they bounce back and forth, but it's not like they push through and get in the third matrix, and so on. Well, I mentioned it already. So I had two consecutive wake up calls at a very young age. One was at 20 when basically I met the girl of my dreams, I thought, but I, let's keep it simple, but also a bit raw.
Couldn't perform sexually. It was much to my shock and disappointment because I'd been waiting to lose my virginity what seemed a long time at 20. But, and this beautiful girl, but somehow for reasons that took me a long time to understand, I couldn't get it on. And so we tried to be a couple anyway, I tried to resolve it, but we, we couldn't and so we ended up breaking up and I was heartbroken, well not heartbroken, but I was thoroughly disappointed.
Went to see this astrologer, he recommended Castaneda. And so the combination of these things over a period of several months was like, okay, things are not the way I think they are. And that led me to learn Spanish, move to Mexico, try and find a shaman, sorcerer, etc, etc. So that was obviously the the most, the first most obvious step.
Then about three years after that, I got together with the same girl and it didn't work out again. But this time I'd actually made an oath. That if, if I couldn't have this girl, I didn't want to live. And when I, when it failed, when it, the relationship ended there, I realized, well, I'm not going to kill myself because that, that's not something that's part of my worldview.
I mean, there's just no way. So I disinherited the fortune that I'd inherited at 18, or small fortune by today's standards, and I disappeared to Northern Africa. I didn't tell anyone where I was going, basically just kind of wiped myself off the face of the earth, except of course I still existed, but I didn't have any connections left to the life I'd left behind.
So that was more of it's like Siddhārtha, you know, in the story of Buddha, or the Hermann Hesse that was more of, there was a greater level of commitment, you could say. I mean, he was quite committed to learn Spanish and move to Mexico, and that was quite wrenching. But this was much more wrenching.
So that was like me voluntarily hitting bottom
Leafbox: going back a second, Jason, before we talk about, I think Morocco or where you were was, was Castaneda and the Carlos Castaneda books and the shaman in Mexico. Were those your second matrix? Were you in a cult of their thoughts
Jasun: I didn't join a cult, but
Leafbox: No, just their ideas being kind of a salvation for your search.
Jasun: Yeah.
Yeah, it was in Castaneda. I need some thorough re examination, which I had to apply because I really got deeply into those books. I started dreaming what seemed like telepathic interactions with the people in Castaneda's books, I was convinced that I had tapped into a real lineage and I still think I may have done actually, but yeah, so it gave my life meaning and purpose and I didn't question it.
So yeah, I would say that Castaneda and that the world of sorcery was probably my certainly my first immersion in a second matrix, but maybe even the, you know, the main, the strongest and most convincing one for me.
Leafbox: I keep thinking about, I've read Castaneda, but the whole thing is that, isn't he, you know, he was an anthropologist and a professor and the whole thing's a lie in a way, right?
So, I'm curious how you filter?
Jasun: Well, we don't know that. We don't know that. I mean, I've written about this. I don't, I don't agree with the whole thing a lie. It's, this is a case of it's not quite, it is kind of like saying, is when people get burned by the first matrix, what they tend to do is they, they, they they scuttle back to the first matrix with their tail between their legs.
So that's what I'd say people have done with Castaneda. They find out it's not what it seems, and so they just jump to the opposite conclusion. Okay, it's not all true, then it's all false. Well, that's, that's how why people bounce back and forth between matrix one and two. You have to be more liminal on that.
You say, okay, it's not all true. So what's going on here? Because It's not satisfactory. Like, anyone who's read the books and had the kind of experiences I've had they know it wasn't, it's not just some really clever huckster who just made stuff up.
Leafbox: No, I think it's like you said in, I don't know if you're in a book or what's the book on Strieber that you have, the title?
Jasun: Prisoner, Prisoner of Infinity.
Leafbox: Prisoner of Infinity. It's all a spectrum. I think you said that recently. It's a spectrum of truth and false and It's, yeah, I like your analogy of jumping back. It's not a quantum leap. It's kind of a slow progression of truth and real and you got to stay in that liminal state.
So that's an interesting, but going back to, so you're in Mexico, you reject, I don't know if you reject Castaneda, but you find, you don't find all the answers there.
Jasun: Sorry to interrupt, but no, I didn't reject Castaneda until my 40s, really, so I was 15 years in the Matrix, but in Mexico itself I did, I followed some sense, so I did end up. Kind of immersed in something like that world.
Leafbox: No, so I was going to say, well, keeping in Mexico, what was the shamans? I mean, are there any memorable shamans that you learned from or did you model things from or did you reject them or how did you?
Jasun: No, I didn't actually apprentice with a shaman until my 30s in Guatemala.
So I had to go further south. And it was quite mundane and profane compared to Castaneda's story. There was no flying Nahals, there was no people turning into crows. And you know, it was the brother of the Cofradia in Santiago Atitlán. I don't, we don't have time to go into all the details, but it's a bit like a mafia, really.
metaphysical mafia there. We shouldn't say that they're doing evil, but I mean it's very practical. People go there with their problems, with wives that are cheating on them, or if they're physically ill, or they need money. Mashimon is the deity there. So shamanism there is quite profane. They're all drinking a lot, the shamans, and it's not obviously very impressive.
Anyway, that was, but that was 10 years later. In the interim, in Mexico, on this first excursion, I, I felt like I got sort of noticed by the shamans in that world. I mean, whether I'm right or wrong in that part of Mexico, Oaxaca, because one particular kept, I kept crossing his path and he was always laughing at me.
So I was fairly sure that they kind of were aware of me, but they didn't consider me, you know, they probably saw me as damaged goods as far as actually being, you know, worth recruiting. And but what happened was I met a burnt out hippie selling an LSD in Oaxaca, and he sort of sowed a seed in me where I went to San Francisco, because I just wanted to play around a bit.
I had lots of money. And in San Francisco, I met a sort of street shaman, in quotes, who was younger than me. And he dosed me with LSD and I went on this very far out journey with him. I don't mean just that, that time, but I mean over several months. The again, we don't have time cause it's a long story, but that was what ended with me disinheriting all my money and disappearing to Morocco.
Like it was a crash course in well I guess fools rushing in where angels fear to tread like he was not ready to be messing around trying to be a drug shaman and I wasn't ready and but it was it was intense I mean it did confirm at the time for me that That there was an alter, a separate reality in Castaneda's phrase, and that telepathy was possible.
I was having intense experiences, but if you take enough LSD, you will, of course. Anyway, so that was, that was basically how that, that chapter ended. It ended not, not well with this guy, really, not that we had a falling out, but because I broke up with the girl, I thought we would all, we're going to come together in this magical journey.
And then I just ended up bailing out completely just disappearing from my life.
Psychedelics and Disinheritance
Leafbox: So presently your relationship to psychedelics is the opposite of that. You're quite against them. Correct.
Jasun: Yeah, I'm fairly hard line because of because I can look back and see how little I benefited and how much I actually have to pay.
And perhaps I'm still paying for the illegitimately gained insights and visions. First of all, the visions were illegitimately gained, you know, artificially using the stimulus and second of all, related to that. I didn't, I didn't really utilize them. Right. I mean, I, I felt like. Super special and powerful and all that, and I had massive dreams for years, you know, astral projecting, and you could say I developed some siddhis, but it didn't improve my life or anybody else's life, just at an ordinary material level, not that that's what it's all about, but nor did it actually help me to resolve my inner trauma or attain any kind of peace of mind.
I was going in the opposite direction without realizing it, I think.
Leafbox: But it's interesting, you said that it then made you disinherit your wealth and totally escape this kind of Mexico model of searching and you jumped to, or is it Morocco, or?
The Lifeline of Journal Writing
Jasun: Morocco. It wasn't that different, though. It was more like a leveling up, because I was still smoking kiff in Mexico, in Morocco.
It was one thing I knew I could get if I had no money and I couldn't eat. At least I could get high. And I was certainly still, I was now, I was now living the archetype of the spiritual seeker, like this guy in a poncho who's just looking for a place to sleep and some food to eat, you know, I'd taken it into the real, wasn't hypothetical anymore.
Yeah, it's interesting. It's just I still feel like you're, so would you say you're jumping back to the first Matrix then? Or would you God, no. No. Where were you, just in a liminal space? And then where was your writing at that point?
I was journal writing to stay alive. Like, it was so essential for me to write a journal at that time, it was a lifeline, because I was in a, the most difficult situation, that was what I'd chosen, so, and I did, you know, Morocco is not an easy place to be a white, a Nazarene with no money begging on the street, you can get killed, and And I was emotionally destroyed.
I was heartbroken. I'd left everything behind. I mean, imagine that somebody who's in their 20s and they have everything and suddenly they've got nothing. It could be really destabilizing. So writing was my way to objectify it. Like, at least I'm writing it all down. And this is a really interesting story.
Unfortunately, I lost all that writing, but you know, it, it doesn't really matter, I suppose, because it. It served its purpose, which it anchored me in my experience, while at the same time providing some distance from it.
Discernment and Belief Systems
Leafbox: So, Jason, maybe going back to as you're older now, what is your filtering process now for new information and have you become more discerning or less discerning or more open or less open to teachers or ideas or and then how do you balance that kind of.
You always talk about pronoia and paranoia.
Jasun: Well you talk about pronoia. I talk about metanoia. I have talked about metanoia and paranoia, but pronoia was new to me, I think pretty much when you mentioned it. I do juxtapose paranoid awareness with. An awareness of the soul or a spiritual perspective, because I think that they're entirely complimentary.
So if you want to use pronoia for that, the sense of providence, for example, the sense of divine providence, if that corresponds with pronoia, then yeah, paranoia and pronoia, paranoia and providence. So, and the thing about discernment is, is that, as I've said a number of times recently, You don't need to believe anything in order to know what to do.
Like, we can be guided by something other than belief. And that would then include knowledge. Because knowledge is, a lot of knowledge is belief. There's some knowledge that's not. Experience I'm talking about here with running a thrift store and trying to contain the goats and stuff. I'm learning things there experientially and they're not really, they don't really have anything to do with belief.
I've just found out that if you do this, that happens, right? So that's to do with the material world. But when you get into conceptual realms like the afterlife or what's going on in dreaming and telepathy and metaphysical stuff You could say that it's knowledge, but that in itself is a belief, essentially.
I mean, you can test it a little bit, and if it keeps working, you'd say, okay, I've confirmed it, but still, there's some element of belief. As soon as it goes into the mind, as soon as knowledge is just, is, is, is, A mind based thing, then I, then I would say it's, it's a, it's it's, it's turned into belief.
So I'm just trying to answer your question now. I can't remember what it was,
Leafbox: The filtering of information.
Jasun: So I'm, I mean, the direct answer is, is I'm much less open and much more discerning. Like being discerning doesn't, it's not the same as being closed minded, but it could certainly look like it.
Like I just tend to disbelieve just about everything these days, and I do wonder, have I just got sour grapes about this, because I do know, or I believe, that a lot of truths if we're not ready for them, they will, they will do harm to us. And so we need, and this is in my life, one needs to reject them.
the belief in them, even if they are true, because that belief has snared us in the second matrix and led us to do things that were not healthy and have preoccupations that were not realistic and not beneficial to us. So, so then we need to create a buffer between that knowledge and ourselves. So instead of having the belief that draws, that draws us to those things, we have the buffer of disbelief.
We just say, I don't believe that. Which is not quite disbelief, but it's, it's close to just, I don't believe it because I don't know. And so, so that puts a person in a strange liminal space because I, I could, I, there are things that I believe and at the same time I don't believe or things maybe that I, I know are true, but I choose not to believe them just because they're not practical.
And so that's, it's easier, it's simpler if I just say, what a lot of crap. But I don't really mean it. It's just that most people who talk about these things don't know what they're talking about. They believe without understanding. So it might as well be crap, right? It might as well be false, even though, like reincarnation is a bit too easy an example.
But, easy, let's use it because it's easy. Somebody who says they're reincarnation of some, of somebody in the past life, they don't know what they're talking about. It's a contradiction in terms. Because they haven't defined anything. They don't know what the soul is, the self is, they don't know what the mind is.
All you know for sure is the body, and the body dies. So if you're going to say, I was Hitler in a past life, obviously you weren't. It's a different body, dude. So, So then it's a different you. So then you have to establish who the you is that isn't, right? So just the easy example. So it's all bullshit.
People talk about reincarnation, it's bullshit. It doesn't mean that something isn't happening that's been crunched down into this belief in reincarnation. But it's easier for me to just be sort of the curmudgeonly who says, Yeah, just, just forget about it. It's a waste of time. So, but I would say that is discernment and well, if you reduce things down to what you have direct experience of that you can trust, we don't know hardly anything.
And so, anyway, and the point I didn't finish making was about if you have some sort of sense of where you're going, and you have the sense that something is guiding you in your choices, then you don't need to believe stuff and you don't need to know very much. And so there's a, there's a trajectory that moves more and more towards a peace of mind and an acceptance of not knowing, which is.
I would say infinitely, which is an adverb I hardly ever use because it's never accurate, but this, this maybe is accurate. It's infinitely more rewarding than knowledge is the, is the acceptance of not knowing because it's infinite. You can just accept everything that you don't know if you see what I mean, right?
Because you don't need to know. Whereas knowledge, you can never have infinite knowledge. Right? So you just keep trying to compile more and more knowledge. And I think it makes us easy prey. I think we are prey to a kind of knowledge based system where we think that we need to gather knowledge in order to have power and influence and control.
And so we get hooked on it and we get hooked on the media that provide knowledge. And worst of all, we get We're susceptible to misinformation
Leafbox: and false teachers and false messages and false. Ideas, I guess. So what would you tell yourself, the younger self? Would you be just, what would you tell your 20 year old broken hearted self now?
Just go with the flow, accept this. How would you talk to yourself now as an older person and more, hopefully wiser, be more discerning, less discerning?
Jasun: I'd say it'd be, it's, it's okay to be less driven. A lot of the things that you're, you're trying to attain that you think are really going to make you happy or that they're really meaningful and true, you, later on you're going to realize that they didn't actually matter, so don't worry so much about that.
Focus on your I was doing this a lot anyway because i had to. But focus on your physical well being and just the things that you can have some control over and, And I suppose the other thing I'd say is, hey dude, you You've got some heavy trauma that you're not looking at. Because that was the main thing I wasn't thinking about.
I just didn't have a clue that I was being driven. That it was a whip. I thought it was a carrot that was drawing me forward. And that it was a good carrot, a real carrot. I didn't realize there was a whip there as well. And that the carrot was just this false thing on a stick, right, that I would never reach.
Conspiratainment and Distractions
Leafbox: I was going to ask yeah, one of the things I like about your writing is that your concept of conspiratainment, which I hopefully you can explain in a second, it relieves, you know, maybe boys get into UFO topics and witchcraft and kind of these dark occult topics or movies or video games or whatever these distracting things, but as you start realizing they're all kind of distractions, I feel like your writing helps people become more discerning and actually become more attuned to the present moment.
Just like you said, you become more, like I have almost no interest in politics now. You know, Trump is the president and you just start kind of losing these layers of interest, right? So one of the things I appreciate about your writing is that you're a good teacher in that sense too. Use your own example of so the question I'm going to ask Jason is in your writing.
Do you find the writing is how you become and answer these discern? How do you manage all these multiple voices? You hear a message about this trauma or this distracting conspiracy. Oh, these people are in charge. How do you, how do you fit all these different voices and how do you keep on the path when you get down a route?
How do you come back to knowing that you're off trail?
On The Craft of Writing
Jasun: I feel like there's two questions in there, because one is about writing, and
the other is, could, could be independent of writing, because I would say, so the question you ended on, if I'm going down a bad trail, and I how do I realize it and turn around or, or move through the bush so that I find the right trail, I did say I'm not following a path, you said I was following a trail, I'm not sure, maybe it's an animal trail or something, but I tend to think that I'm just creating my own trail.
So, so it isn't necessarily, it might be too literal to being on the wrong trail, but anyway the, the answer to that part of the question I think would be to do with what I was touching on earlier, which is having a, a sense of being guided by something that doesn't, it's not feeding us information so that we can make a decision.
It's just nudging us this way and that. So it's to do with physical. And it's interior. It's to do with physical sensations. Like for example, and I wonder, you know, how many people can relate to this. I would think a lot, but I know it's a common quality or characteristic or symptom of autism. If there's something that I said or done in any given day, I'm not sure about, I will think about it and then I would, and I will see how I feel in my body.
I mean here, an obvious example is shame. When a person feels ashamed or even embarrassed, which is a lesser version, they feel hot or they feel like squirming. It's a bodily thing, it's not a cognitive and it's not even an emotion, shame. It's actually a bodily feeling of wanting to contract and push something away or hide.
So that's an extreme example, but I am talking about that at a subtler level. Like is there some feeling of aversion or flinching or, or just not wanting to think about recoiling from this, this thought of something I've said or done. So that, that's like on the path, you know, am I starting to feel like something is wrong?
It's that simple. Tuning into one's subtle senses. So that, but that isn't connected to writing, like somebody, anybody could develop that sense without writing, I think. But I could connect the two by saying that And maybe there's something similar in terms of when I want to express something by writing.
Well, first of all, I'm trying to understand something by writing. So I don't quite know what it is that I want to express, but I've got some idea. And so I'm trying to find the words for something that I don't quite know what it is until I find the words. And it's quite mysterious here to articulate, but how, how well the words come and how well the words come together lets me know how close I am to actually hitting the nail on the head.
So, which sounds sort of backwards because you say, well, somebody's got a really good idea or a really intelligent insight, and then they're trying to find the words to express it. And I'm saying that actually, if I find the right words, I will actually kind of midwife that insight into conscious awareness.
So writing is like that, I think, for me. I'm trying to make something unconscious conscious using language to do it.
Leafbox: It seems like a vipassana esque practice. I'm going to bring it back to Buddhism, but you're using writing as a scalpel to analyze these sankharas. So for me, I have a lot of disattachment from my body.
So I imagine for you writing is this way to actually feel what you're actually feeling and then process that. Get closer and closer to that sensation. And then as you see it, then it materializes larger and larger. if i'm correct?
Jasun: Probably in your own terms. I'm always looking for a feeling of lightness and delight when I write.
And I'd say the feeling of delight has to do with something coming through really clear, loud and clear like this is true. And. So, but there is a wrestling. There's a wrestling that happens in order to have that lightness. I suppose like any other kind of training, if you want to be light and you want to be smooth and flow, you've got to go through the clunky period of actually You know, getting flexible or getting adept at what it is you want to do.
So, that's true in a general sense over time with writing, developing a skill. Those also can be true line by line. Like, I start with a line, there might be some wrestling, but then I'm gradually calibrating what it is. Also like a radio that's slightly out of tune, and you're just trying to get it to, and then, ah, then the signal's clear.
So writing, as I said earlier, it is a physical activity and what's literally happening is you are, one is, making physical a thought, because you, you know, the thought is, is going on here, up here, we imagine, I don't know for sure if thoughts are happening in the head, but that's what we say anyway. And maybe this has to be questions, but anyway, the thought's happening somewhere inside the body, and consciousness could even be outside the body, but anyway, the thought's happening somewhere, and it's non physical, and then the act of writing, typing, or moving the hand, You're, you're bringing that non physical thing into a physical form through the act of moving, I mean, which of course does cause a word on the page, but before that is this physical movement.
Leafbox: Jason, do you discern your own thoughts or how are you, do you trust them all or? Does your thoughts lie to you, or are you discerning of them? For me, I find my mind is always often lying to me, covering up the truth. I don't know if it's a way to cover trauma, or it's hard to really know what it's, if you've ever had OCD type thinking.
Jasun: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I was going to get to that because you mentioned a bunch of voices, and so part of what writing is, I suppose, is trying to bring those different voices into some sort of coherence, some sort of order, like you've got a bunch of musicians playing their different instruments and they're completely out of sync and they don't care about each other and you're like, no, hey, look, actually you over there be quiet.
You listen and follow each other until you actually end up having some sort of real music playing. Something like that is going on, I think, with writing. Potentially, bringing these different voices, these different influences into, into some sort of order and cohesion. And then what was the last thing you just mentioned?
Oh yeah. And so just thinking is also like that, like, it's, it's fairly normal, I presume for, and it is for me, is to have one thought, which basically says. No, no, no, you're all shit, this is all fucked up, you know, fucked all this, and then another thought that says, oh, come on, just get over that, just stop being a, you know, stop being a whiner, or just, I'm not going to listen to you, I know that's not true, it might not be quite literally like a dialogue like that, but essentially we know that we have different levels of awareness, and one level is wiser and more trustworthy than another, and can address, can deal with.
And so I think there has to be a gradual process by which the wiser voices become more dominant and the traumatized, reactive, angry, petulant voices get more disciplined I suppose as well, whatever you do with unruly children. You know, teach them manners.
Leafbox: Which leads to trauma probably, but yeah, it keeps coming back.
Jasun: No, yeah. You don't want to crack down on them. That doesn't work.
Leafbox: Do you find that fiction writing is more able to get attuned to some of the chaotic voices or nonfiction or, cause you, you know, I was gonna ask about your film, the, which we watched and maybe you can talk about that a little bit and the differences between that form of communication and trying to understand and dialogue with yourself.
Like, which way is easier to get a tune with the soul for you?
Jasun: Well, for me, nonfiction is just easier. Yeah, it just is easy. I find fiction to be very difficult. So I just, I don't really feel I've been successful with fiction as yeah, I've tried it quite a lot. I've never published fiction. So that's part of being unsuccessful.
don't think I've ever quite nailed it. With fiction, at least some of the fiction I've written, there's definitely more of a sense or a belief anyway that I need to channel. I need to actually access some part of my awareness. Or maybe it's not even my awareness, but I need to access something that isn't I'm not consciously controlling, right?
So I want to, I want to hear voices. I want to actually find some, whether it's out there, it could be literally out there tuning in telepathically to some person I've never met, or just some part of me that's never had a voice, giving it life, giving it a voice, giving expression to writing the fiction, then those characters animate the fiction.
That seems to be how that's meant to work, and I haven't, or does work and I haven't had much success with that for whatever reason. It's reminded me actually of what I was told about victims of ritual abuse, you know, when they get split fragmented. One of the things that's recommended is that they start to have dialogues with these different parts and actually let them speak.
And that also is something I've not really had much success with doing. It just has always felt somehow unnatural to me, even though I don't doubt that I have different personalities. It's just that it's not obvious to me or to anyone else. I think it's probably true of all of us. So I think fiction is more obviously a way to, to, to become conscious of being fragmented and to, to try and actually restore order in the psyche potentially.
Leafbox: Which brings me back to your latest essay is that you seem to suggest that the best fiction is that which the writer is most attuned with that true voice or that true signal, correct? You, the Russian author you bring up, you're just so immersed in this, right?
Jasun: Yeah, but that's not, I mean, what you said there was tautological.
Obviously, the more in tune you are with what you're trying to transmit, the better the transmission. But this has to do with, we're talking about the characters is, well, with Dostoevsky, seems to me, I mean, it seems apparent is that he created this character of Skolnikov because there was a, an aspect of himself that he wasn't at peace with and he didn't know what to do with it.
So he wanted to give it voice and give it form. It's a bit like in the modern age, it's like having an avatar that you send into a virtual, into a simulation to see what happens and you get to learn about yourself and about, you know, potential experiences that you might have and navigate better the future.
It's a bit like that, but it's, this is more mysterious, I think. He, yeah, so Dostoevsky, he embodied, if that's the word, I mean, he gave literary form to an aspect of his psyche, a murderer, somebody with a superiority complex who looked down on people, somebody who was, gave into their despair and committed violence as a relief from their despair, et cetera, all these other elements to Raskolnikov, but he's not just a psychopath.
He's not a psychopath at all. He gave expression to that character in, in the form of a novel and, and saw what would happen, like basically saw what would happen if he let that part, part of him take himself over. And he did let it in, in, in this model, he, he would have let it take him over through the act of writing, but obviously that's within a safe environment because any violence he commits is just on the page.
And then the consequences, crime and punishment. He, he also then experienced the consequences of giving into that part of himself and the suffering. And so yeah, a writer I think needs to be willing and able to enter into a kind of waking dream state in which they're generating experiences that aren't actually happening to them physically and feel them and then write them down.
So, yeah, it could be very exhausting, it could be deranging, I think writing is a risky endeavour anyway, but I think that fiction writing, at least in this context, is potentially a lot more risky, because you are creating imaginary worlds and trying to make them real. Now, I don't believe you actually manifest reality necessarily, Philip K.
Dick did but, even leaving that aside, if you are generating internally. If you're generating a reality internally, you're going to affect yourself physiologically and so on. I mean, Dostoevsky was, he was a compulsive gambler. He had health issues and who knows? I mean, it may have taken its toll, but it may also have been that he might not have survived if he hadn't wrestled those demons to the ground through the writing. Anyway, that shows in the writing. This is a writer who is truly wrestling with his own life force and trying to purge himself of something.
The Source of Thoughts and Inspiration
Leafbox: So Jason, where you mentioned a lot of words that I stuck to, demon mainly and the radio signal analogy. Where do you think these signals are coming from?
And, and also I wanted to discuss the bi directionality of writing. You said that you create this real world and in your recent writing you're talking about this concept of mirror neurons and how people, when they read, they actually, the mind has no inability to distinguish between the fiction and the real.
If you murder someone in a book, you're actually murdering someone. Your mind thinks you're murdering someone. That can create this traumatic experience or bliss experience or whatever it is. And then, you know, just the word spelling also, spell making. There's a lot of, there's an occult aspect to writing, right?
You're grabbing something in this ether, putting it onto the page, but at the same time you're putting it back out into the world. So I guess the question one is, where, what is in the ether? Sometimes you talk about entities and what is this ether that's outside of our minds?
Jasun: Earlier when I, when I got stuck on the mind on my thoughts, because I had to admit that not only do I not know if they're in my brain, but coming from through my brain, but I don't know if they're in the body. They could be, they have to come through the body, I think, in order for us to have thoughts.
But they might come from outside the body. I mean, there are schools of thought, such as Rudolf Steiner, that seem to be saying, suggesting this or stating it outright that that our consciousness is informed like a radio that picks up signals by, by entities, whether they're angelic or demonic or whatever other class of entities might be out there.
When we dream, I mean, where does that come from, right? We actually get sound and vision, David Bowie's song you know, flowing through our awareness. If you've ever fallen asleep consciously and noticed it it's quite alarming to experience one's thoughts in what I think is the normal sense, as in just words running through one's head that one can't quite hear, but it's almost like hearing thoughts turning into images and an actual sound sometimes when I'm forced if I hear voices in my ear like somebody I know or human voices sound human actually as if they were in the room.
And then also, you know, with images, it's just as if I'm staring suddenly at a movie screen with my eyes closed. So yeah, where does that come from? Well, I mean, it is theoretical, but
I do think that our assumed model first matrix model is Is it the brains generating it or at the very least that we are, you don't have to be a material reductionist, but the assumption is that everything we're thinking about is coming from us, but that can't be right. I mean, just can't be right.
So i, well, I mean, my I'm hesitating because I feel as though I'm moving into a realm of belief now. But, but anyway, my belief is, is that the human body is a kind of receiver transmitter. And we use pickup signals from everywhere. Now, of course, there's some consistency, and I, you know, every day.
Every morning I wake up and the kind of voice in my head or the stream of consciousness that I have basically says it's me and it's familiar so it seems as though there's continuity and it's not as I just keep picking up different broadcasts in my head, in my skull. So there is a, there is a unifying principle.
You could say has personal history and personal memory anyway. Like there's a thing that records all the memories and identifies with them and says, this is you. This is you, and that's the boss in the skull. If you're not, you know, too DID, dissociated identity disorder. Then you've got that boss voice that's just putting it, it's, it's putting copywriting, all of it, and it's saying this is mine.
But clearly that's not, you know, there wouldn't be such a thing as inspiration if that was all we had. Aha! Ideas and memories that pop into the head out of nowhere you know, the compulsive images or urges that we, we reject, we don't like a lot of it, I would say, is coming from the outside, from the ether, as you put it, and we're, and we're picking it up.
I don't know how this relates to writing exactly, because that was the context you put it in. That was a two way thing with writing. I don't know, maybe you can get us back on track there.
Leafbox: I'm curious, one, your hesitancy on the belief. It's like you want to say God or universe or non dual, so maybe we can step back on that.
Why are you so hesitant to name it that, or you just don't know?
Jasun: I wasn't going to, no, I wasn't hesitant to name it, I was just hesitant to talk about something that is ethereal. Like even the idea that we're receiver transmitters, that's certainly something I believe. And I, the thing about belief is you, if you believe it, then you think you know it.
That's what belief means. Think you know. So so I think I know that we are receiver transmitters, but I like, I've just become very disciplined, I think, over the years with writing. I want to try and always at least acknowledge if something is abstract and theoretical as compared to something that's kind of self evident.
So I don't know how self evident it is that we're receiver transmitters. Right, so I'm not sure, maybe I'm wondering who my audience is. As far as, I mean see if you're bringing God, which obviously is the biggest small word there is then all bets are off, because well one very quickly could and maybe needs to go to all is God and God is everything, and so we are part of God in some way we don't understand.
So we don't even exist individually at all, right, so, and they end up there and then So that's the thing about belief. It's a slippery slope or abstract. When you talk about abstract concepts, yeah, I find myself on this slippery slope. That's my hesitancy. It's not like I don't want to commit to, to admitting things or anything like that.
I just don't want to lose the ground, you know, that we're on.
Leafbox: Well, connecting it back to your essays on telepathy and the mirror neurons, I keep getting back to the symbol that, at least what I picked up is a, you know, you have this ether. The writer is channeling that. But at the same time, the reader is then mimicking and creating this kind of matrix itself of belief, structure, and the signal gets amplified as other readers read it.
Jasun: Yeah. Well, I think there are, I mean, the writing, as I said, is a way to make something abstract and ethereal, physical, like thought, consciousness, impressions, perceptions that are going on in our consciousness. wherever they are in the body you write them down and you, you, you fix them in some form that doesn't change, like the words on the page, once it's published anyway, they don't change on the internet, you can always go in and edit, but anyway, it's, it's, it's effectively physical, like it's not literally written in stone, but it's figuratively written in stone at this point.
And and yeah, the source of whatever's written down there is. It's still, it's back in that amorphous experience of something ethereal passing through, yeah, your consciousness. And so, at the other end, the person reads that, and the part of them that's connected to the ethereal and that things are passing through or it can tune into whatever's out there is then given the coordinates in not really space time but this ethereal whatever we're talking about here but let's say the coordinates and so it can it can zero in and actually then it's receiving the same what ethereal, the same signal that the person who wrote it was receiving.
So those, the writer and the reader are then in the same space time coordinates at at the same time, different, right? It's a different point in time and a different point in space. Physically, in their consciousness, they have actually met. wherever those insights are. I mean, they're probably non local anyway.
We get into quantum mechanics if we're not careful. So that, I mean, I, this, we are on the edges of the possibility of language and one of the traps that's easy to fall into and ironically I don't know what the word is here, but this is, A second matrix concept is the matrix itself. The matrix itself is the second matrix concept, if you see what I mean.
The idea that we're living in a simulation, that people who believe that literally or figuratively, they're in the second matrix then, because obviously that's not a mainstream belief. Well, that's, it's getting there. But the point I wanted to make is that that is an attempt to make sense of what I'm trying to make sense of now by literalizing it, that we aren't physically here.
I mean, the bodies are physically here, but the essence of what we are is outside of space time. So then writing becomes This is so hard to put into words, but writing is a way to realize that what we think is physically literally happening is not really where it's at, like where, where the reality is, is where the soul is.
And the soul is like beaming in this experience to, to, to some physical domain, and then it's being represented metaphorically by physical actions and stuff. I don't know if I'm even making sense now, you've really pushed me beyond my limits, but so then potentially you can, you can interpret or experience the physical metaphorical enactment in a way that it directs you back to the source, back to the source.
Leafbox: I know you like to bring it back to the physical, so I was like, just aware noticing my body sensations. I felt quite tingly as you were talking. It feels like you were manifesting a more beautiful description of non duality. This aspect of everything, you know, this spectrum of reality in the ether and writing is then this liminal way to you know, the space travel analogy. It's the same thing. If you really do deep meditation, you'll find this point that manifests into this bubble. It floats away. We're all looking at the same bubble when we're reading a story. For instance, it's a way to experience that bubble to collectively at the same time.
So, yeah, to me, I felt some warmth for some reason. So I was just acknowledging that. So it felt like you were getting close to something there.
Jasun: Good. Okay.
Leafbox: So yeah, I guess the writing aspect is just, it keeps coming back to the closer the soul to me is this, my belief system is that I kind of lean to that non, non duality that everything is and everything is God and God is everything, right?
So not in a Christian form, but it's all that reality or just such a small spectrum that we can tap into. So the writer or the reader can then shift that radio signal, which can be useful.
Jasun: I think it has to do with literalizing something that's happening anyway, because we narrow our consciousness, maybe it's infinite, but certainly vastly greater potential consciousness that we are.
We narrow it down to this bandwidth of language to a large extent, what we're thinking, this feed running through our mind. And even the experience of being physical, which we don't really have if we're in our mind, but I guess this combination of being in the mind interpreting everything we're doing physically, while at the same time being fixated on our physical existence, as if that's the only reality, this, the combination there makes this very narrow bandwidth.
And so it's as if, I'm thinking Philip K. Dick again here, but it's as if we've reduced ourselves to two dimensionality, and we're just words on a page. Compared to what we really are, the life that we think we're living is, is just the equivalent of you know, these, these scrawls on a page. It's so narrow and it's so reduced and it's so stripped of all the color and the dimensionality of existence.
So, so that metaphor, now I'm getting a warm tingly feeling, that metaphor or a metaphor for that truth, if it is a truth, is writing itself. So it's a weird paradox, because writing, we're reducing it even further, you think you're sitting reading a book, all of your attention is just going on these black words on a page.
So you think you're actually reducing yourself even further, like going down to one dimension at this point, potentially. But It's, it's also potentially, or maybe more to the point, it is potentially, it takes you up a dimension because you, because it's bringing your awareness to these false limits, these false confines that you've, you've entered into, precisely because you see, now I'm just having this insight, you see that words on a page aren't just words on a page, they can open up whole vistas of the imagination.
And even real experience you're tuning into, and so then the same thing, that can ripple up to the next level, where is it in this, in this body life. You can also see, oh wait, I'm not just this linear sentence that, you know, begins with birth and ends with death. I'm also the whole book, the whole library and, you know, the whole universe that the library's in.
Leafbox: Yeah, I think you described it beautifully. I mean, it's the same as if you hear a, you know, a vibration. If you really listen into that vibration, it will keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Like you said, and life itself is that.
Autism and Perception
Leafbox: Jumping to, I know you've self described yourself as autistic or Asperger's, or neurodivergent. I'm curious, What do you think the role of that is in attunement to the soul or are you less attuned or more attuned or just a different tune?
Jasun: Well, it's a problem to know autism because it, you know, like, touched on before with other subjects we've talked about today, like we don't necessarily know what we mean when we say that word, but with that proviso if we say that autism has to do, neurodivergence has to do with a different configuration of the brain and of the body, it's not just the brain, but the brain is sort of a hologram of something, I think that itself relates to a, a natural, I'm going to say it's natural.
It could be a result of trauma, but there's still trauma as part of nature resistance to socialization which itself then prevents a closing down that we were just talking about of the awareness into a more linear, literal materialistic identity based experience of existing. So I say autism has to do with this actually being more open to these, these deeper layers of reality that thereby make it more difficult to function at the surface layer of reality that we function in, because it's, it is constructed in such a way that is predicated, it's predicated on the denial of these deeper levels and it, and it maintains the denial. It's like a, a surface world that is designed to prevent us from realizing that there are these other deeper worlds beneath it or higher worlds above us. It's actually built as a kind of prison for perception.
So autism is an attempt for the prison break. You could say in the species, if we want to talk big but also in the individual in terms of we can diverge. You know, our neurons can diverge from the usual map. Maybe we get back to mirror neurons, because I do think it has to do with not being so self oriented.
So, where was I going with that? So yeah, being more in tune. with the wider, deeper, higher realities where the soul is more more in its element, let's say. I mean, the soul also wants to be here in this narrow bandwidth because it wants to be in all the levels. But its its element is, is, you know, the whole spectrum of experience.
Leafbox: How would you contrast that with like a schizophrenic type thinking, which is so scattered and just so in tune with so many signals?
Jasun: Well, you know, schizophrenia was well, autism was called childhood schizophrenia and adult schizophrenia was considered a waste basket for, for everything. But yeah, I just don't know what it is. Just call it schizophrenia, right? So, so it doesn't, again, it doesn't really mean that much or at least.
It's tricky to talk about without talking about what we mean. Now I wrote a book, sort of about schizophrenia, but about movies with the, in the context of schizophrenia and the experience of schizophrenia. And the first thing I learned when I was writing the book, researching it was that although schizophrenia meant a split, means a split, it doesn't mean a split in the psyche between two parts of the psyche, which I always thought I, the cliche of schizophrenia is having two personalities.
It means a split between our own perceptions and experience and, and the reality that we're perceiving, like we feel cut off from the world, the environment, the thing, the reality that we're actually interacting with. So then schizophrenics can feel like they're in a dream, they can feel like the TV's talking to them, the reality just isn't, the reality they're experiencing, A, is completely different from the reality other people are experiencing, and B, is somehow interacting with them in a way that is invasive.
So they feel at odds with it. They can't find a place in this reality. So you think of a movie like They Live, or The Matrix Again, or Dark City. These were, you know, some of the kind of films that I was writing about Fight Club where, where the protagonist is at odds with reality and, and struggling to find a way to navigate this sort of hostile maze of the world.
That I think has to do with perceiving things in the world that other people aren't perceiving, and that the world is, is, is designed to prevent us from perceiving, partly, to hide from us.
Perception and Reality
Jasun: So as we start, if, if we're open to perceiving those things. It means we are tuned into deeper realities, but it means that the ordinary world that everyone else is telling us is the real world can become more and more hostile seeming and certainly more and more chaotic and out of control and unpredictable and, you know, unfixed and surreal.
And right. So we have visions, we have delusions. We think we're being controlled by demons. We think that there's, there's conspiracies against us, whatever the, the supposed paranoid delusion of the schizophrenic is chances are it's a bolderized version of something that's really going on that the, the superficial, the surface world is denying and hiding and concealing.
And the the problem with schizophrenia is we're using, we're using the, the components or the symbols or the. definitions and the criteria of the first matrix to try and understand the second matrix, which, you know, of the ordinary world to understand what's happening in this invisible world. And so we literalize it and it becomes crazy.
It sounds crazy and it sort of is crazy because it's not quite that literal, but not being literal doesn't mean it's not real. Again, literal, literary. that that surface bandwidth world of the literal world is, is not the only world there is. So schizophrenic can see, can glimpse other deeper aspects of the ordinary world.
Then chances are he's going to get diagnosed and he might end up. You know, acting like a crazy person, but anyway, to answer your question, I think it has to do with being more in tune, not less in tune, just, but less socially adroit, you know.
Leafbox: So is that world more real, or less real, or, it always feels like the schizophrenic type things, there's a darkness, whereas the autistic thinking might not have that suffering aspect as much, to me, I don't know.
Jasun: I don't know about that, I mean, I think, well, because most autists, They don't grow out of it, but they learn to adapt and they adjust to being neurodivergent and they become adults who are either just reasonably functional and don't stand out, or they're remarkable outstanding adults like David Bowie or David Byrne or somebody like this.
Whereas somebody who's, who's schizophrenic as an adult obviously they haven't managed to cope. They haven't managed to find a currency or a way of adapting to the ordinary world that they can at least get by and at best. Although if you're, if you're Bill Gates, it's maybe not the best outcome, but at best find a niche in the world where you, you have lots of influence and you get recognized for being unusual.
Whereas the schizophrenic, no, they're like, so they may be, it may be that it's
Leafbox: To me it just feels like the signal is too much for the schizophrenic mind to handle, right? You're tapping into just too much flow of the spectrum.
Jasun: Yeah, and you haven't learned to turn it down and you haven't learned to turn it into a, into some sort of creative expression whereby people will enjoy your schizophrenic visions and you can feel somewhat reassured and calmed by the fact that you're being heard.
Because it must be very A big part of the distress and anxiety of being schizophrenic, having these visions and weird experiences is you can't communicate them without being told that you're crazy. Obviously that's going to make it worse. Whereas if you can find a way to communicate, people will hear them and not want to commit you.
That will reduce the pressure and you can gradually adapt and learn the language. Of the world, which is, well, you just, you just don't let on that this actually is the world you live in, you just, you just make it seem that you've got a very active imagination and you're creating weird, you know, paintings or, or songs or, or movies or what have you.
But, I mean, shamanism as well, there's an overlap. Artists, shamans, schizophrenics, there's always been, there's always been a continuum in my mind, hence I was drawn to all three.
Personal Experiences with Autism
Leafbox: So Jason, when you found I mean, you're older, so I don't know what it was like when you were younger, but I feel like autism's a newer term, it just wasn't around I feel even in the eighties when I was young.
I never Yeah, no. Like yeah, it wasn't, yeah. So did you find kind of a second matrix relief in that term, or did you find, oh, I found my people, or, oh, now I know myself. Like, this is what I've been searching for in my group, and it
Jasun: for me, it was helpful to bring me down to earth because, I mean, it was actually congruent with self diagnosing with chronic fatigue syndrome, because I had all these physical symptoms for 20 years that I interpreted in this spiritual second matrixy way.
There was Kundalini and my ego and my identity was blocking the Kundalini, causing all this pain and exhaustion. And then not just Kundalini, it was Lucifer wanted to enter my body and, and be incarnated through me and I was resisting and hence I was suffering. So I had these very elaborate interpretations that didn't help.
And so when I finally bit the bullet. and got diagnosed, quote unquote, it was a loose diagnosis with a chronic fatigue syndrome so I could get disability benefit in London, I felt this relief, like I don't have to be the one, I don't have to be telling myself I've got to dissolve my ego in order to get it.
I'm just some other guy, you know, one of millions of people who suffers from this weird. condition, right? It was humbling in a pleasant way because there was relief in it. And so autism was a bit like that. Not, not exactly, but I, okay, so I am an anomaly, an anomaly, but there's a reason why I'm an anomaly.
It's not like I'm, I'm just, I'm not one of a kind, like the only one, cause that's very alienating. There are others out there. And Well, I mean, there were just things I learned, sort of, by, by reading about it. Like, oh, autists, autists are more relaxed if they rock, and, and, and they do act weird, and they've got weird body language, and, and I found that if I let myself be autistic, in the sense of move my body in odd ways, I did feel more relaxed, because I wasn't trying to pretend to pass or try to pass for somebody who was basically normal, which, ironically, I never really did.
try because I always wanted to be special and exceptional. But in, in other ways, I did try and I didn't want to look retarded. That's for sure. I was always trying to be cool. For example, you know, autists can't be cool. Not really. David Byrne did a pretty good job, but and David Bowie for that matter. But you know what I mean?
I mean, there's always going to be something a bit off there. And so I was kind of embracing more in my forties with the self diagnosis of autism. I was embracing this uncool, nerdy, geekish, you know, socially, that was the other thing, social anxiety. I always thought that was a deficiency, it's something wrong with me, I'm supposed to be fearless, I'm supposed to be cool, you know, I'm not supposed to care about any of that, but then, oh, I'm autistic, well, they're, you know, they're terrible, this is completely socially useless, so okay, well then I'll, I'll, I'll let myself be socially useless, nothing to be ashamed of, things like that, you know, in terms of accepting myself, it was useful.
I don't.
Leafbox: Yeah, interesting. I still, I don't want to wrong diagnose you. To me, you don't feel, you're so eloquent and so high skilled verbally, it just seems hard for me to understand that you're jumping to Morocco and meeting shamans. It just doesn't seem like autistic traits.
Jasun: Well, what about David Bowie, though?
I mean Not that I want to compare myself to him, but I mean as somebody who's high functioning, right? He wouldn't, he doesn't have these traits, but obviously it was super weird and there was something odd about him.
Leafbox: Well, I guess yeah, I think maybe your frankness is probably your most Aspergery quality.
You're very frank and honest. You cut through the bullshit. So I think that's usually not socially congruent, right?
Jasun: Well, I mean, the, the, the description of Aspergerians by the Hans Asperger, as the guy who coined it, was little professors. He said Aspergerian kids were like little professors.
Well, I was like that. I was very precocious. I'd come out with these very sort of deep comments, very eloquent, I didn't know where the parents would kind of parade me before their guests at dinner they're just, you know, want me to say stuff because the guests would find it really funny like how, how sort of prematurely adult I was in this way in terms of my intellect and I, I wanted to be a mad scientist.
Like, I had this idea. I didn't need, I was terrible at science. So it was, it was just kind of like, I had the sense that this is the kind of temperament I have, or the kind of personality I have. It wasn't because I was interested in science, but just this kind of brainy, curiosity about how do things work and so anyway, so I did fit the bill in these ways.
It's just that I wasn't, I wasn't low functioning. I was fairly high functioning, but not compared to a lot of kids. Like I couldn't get laid and I couldn't talk to girls. I couldn't, I didn't really have friends like socially. I was, I don't know if I'd get diagnosed in today's diagnosis, happy world.
Probably, probably, but, but in any event. I definitely thought there was something a bit deficient about me growing up because I didn't seem to be able to get along, you know, in the way other kids were. I just didn't want to be like those other kids. Fortunately I found two or three friends who, who were close enough to like that although I still think I was the weirdest one, but they were close enough to how I was so I had a little clique
Sending Beacons - Challenges of Social Connection
Leafbox: So maybe we can talk for a second and about your efforts to connect with others.
So you're writing you're communicating always attempting to dialogue with yourself. And now you seem always to be interested in communicating with others Right. You, and then you're bringing up your childhood that you weren't so good at it, but it seems like it's a cognitive and strong aspect of what you desire now to connect to others and you have this Manopticon group and maybe we could talk about that.
Jasun: Yeah, yeah. Well, it is it seems to be the most important thing. I certainly, I was just talking about it today. I still talk to myself. I still do recordings a few times a week. And I was talking about it today that, I said I had a good day, but the only thing that wasn't good was that I didn't get any responses to my post on Wednesday, which mentioned having a meeting on Saturday and just email me or contact me if you want to come, like nobody.
And this has got two and a half thousand subscribers and almost 200 paying subscribers. Where the hell is everybody? Anyway, it really frustrates me. So it's, it's this. This is an ongoing issue for me, and I say the issue is in me, the issue, but it's also out there as well, like why, why is it so difficult to find people to talk to?
Now, I can do, I do the podcast, I've done it for years, the Liminalist, Stormy Weather. Watery Theorems, Warts and Storms, Crucial Fictions, The Liminalist, and now The Jobcast. So I've done about six different series of podcasts in the last 16 years. And never, I'm never, I never leave off for very long.
So I've talked to, you know, hundreds of people. It's not hard to find people to talk to for the podcast, although even that can be tricky because I'm lazy. But to, to actually assemble a group, which I think is more interesting, or at least it's different, it's not either or that has been consistently difficult.
And so I say there's, there's this issue I have with actually achieving it, but then there's also the issue I have with why do I get so bummed out when I can't achieve it? Those are almost two separate things because but they're obviously related. It's obviously that important to me that I'm not quite doing it right because I think we have to be relaxed and at ease in order to achieve things.
So if something's a bit too fraught or if we're too invested in it, we, we communicate that through our brain states, right? We communicate our dis- ease, and that keeps people at a distance. So I think I'm unconsciously signaling something different from, hey, come and hang out, clearly, because nobody's responding.
Why they're not responding, right? It's, it's, it's a mystery, but we can't answer that. But we can answer why is it so important to me? Well, the, the simplest answer, I mean, the quickest answer is I didn't have a very good functioning family environment to grow up with, so I never really had my tribe.
Because in the modern age, although we're losing that now, this now one's tribe is one's family. And maybe if one lives in a small village or town, well, there's a community there, but that's, that's very rare, I think these days. So it definitely didn't have that, but I didn't even have a good, comfortable family environment.
It was seeped in alcohol and bullying from my brother. And so, so what we don't want, we don't get as children. We, we look for thereafter and we also try to provide it for others. At least that's the shamanic formula. They say that if you have an innate capacity to be a healer, which not many people have, but if you do, then what you will likely end up Being effective as in healing or helping people is the thing that you yourself need healing.
So you will heal yourself by providing it for others. So for me, it's definitely the company of men primarily. And then secondarily is. community or group work together. I was never into sports as a kid as well, so I never even had that experience of sport, never joined the army needless to say, and I was never in a band only just made a film last year, maybe this is why I was drawn to filmmaking so I haven't, don't have much experience of working in a group, in groups at all, mostly solitary for my 50 odd years.
So yeah, I haven't resolved that yet. I haven't resolved the the tension in me that wants to be individual or autonomous, but also wants to belong to be part of some tribal community by, by finding the right group, not that it would necessarily be the same people, but the right sort of configuration or the right environment, community environment in which I can be both, like I can stay autonomous, but would also interact with a group.
And I would say that, as the last point, that if we want to know ourselves, it's not enough just to study ourselves, you know, self examination, said Socrates, but that's not, that's not sufficient for knowing oneself. Right? We need to actually be seen by others and then see what others are seeing in us by the dialogues.
Like it took having a dialogue with one's soul isn't just about writing or talking to oneself. It's about talking to others and connecting to others at a deep level so that they will mirror back to us the state of our soul or the phase that our souls are in or whatever our souls are trying to let into our awareness or bring into our awareness. That's all, that all depends on some sort of group dynamic.
Leafbox: Do you think that bringing back your analogy of the second matrix, building a group, building a tribe, is that your attempt to kind of find some warm cult to solve your search? And then are you going to eventually realize that's a, another? Yeah, I'm just playing devil's advocate, but the second, Matrix.
Jasun: Well, I think that that is one of the obstacles, even I think even actually in people's minds, one of the things that would keep them from participating is not a conscious fear of a cult, but just a feeling of like, of reluctance or recalcitrance fear even about signing up to participate in something that.
They don't know what it is, but it revolves around one person, et cetera, et cetera. So, so there's always the potential for a cult, as I talked about at the very beginning, if you're trying to model alternate ways of being in the world that aren't, aren't of this world. Then yes, you're going to have to do something that can be incorporated by the second matrix or is identifiable within the second matrix.
Like the guy that I had was most effective running groups with in tandem with Dave Oshana and so I was very effective running groups for people that went to his thing you know, between the meetings that, where we would all get together without Dave, the leader. And and that went on for a couple of years and it was, you know, every week.
And there was never a problem finding enough people because they were all, you know, Dave was bringing them in and I was bringing people to Dave. Anyway, he, he branded, brands himself as a spiritual teacher. His website's all white. It ticks all the boxes for a spiritual teacher. So it's about enlightenment, this, that, and the other.
And it's very restricting. It doesn't really represent him, but it's enough to get people to sign up. And they think they know what it is, so they're like, I want some of that. I haven't done that. I haven't found a brand, I haven't found a way to make myself recognizable within the second matrix. And certainly not within the, well, I say certainly, but well, not in the first matrix either.
Like in the, I could try to be a writer who would help do a writing workshop or even just No, if I were going to talk about my books, that would be second matrix. So I'm pretty much doomed or condemned or whatever for some sort of second matrix branding. I don't think I could brand myself for the first matrix very easily because people would look at my books and say, well, stay away from that guy.
So then it has to be right. It has to be. Well, am I the conspiracy expert? Am I the guy who survived occultism? I'm the guy who's going to help your soul come online. What am I?
Leafbox: Yeah. Big mother and all kinds of strange topics. So, but it's funny, your, your latest post, I didn't know about your matrix book.
Your first one, the self help, but that seemed like a level one book. I haven't read it. I just ordered a copy
Jasun: well that was What I wrote about that was an attempt to create a little audience cult around me. That was well disguised. Maybe it was kind of first matrix, second matrix, a bit of both, but it was self branding by attaching to a franchise that crashed and burned right after my book came out.
So it was a bad choice of franchise to hook myself to. But there was more to it than that as well. Yeah.
Leafbox: So maybe you need to just say, join this group, get a free copy of my PDF kind of thing. Like, you have to offer something. You know, it's like when you go to the church, they give you some, you know, the Hindu temple gives you the sweet ball.
And I think your groups, you don't know what you're getting into. It's just, oh man, what's going to happen? You know, UFOs and conspiratiment and Kubrick
Jasun: yeah, well, but I've tried to brand them at least you know, one at a time, as in this, we're going to have a meeting and we're going to explore these subjects.
So I've been trying to hook them up with the essays that I'm writing, thinking of people find this interesting and meaningful, that gives them a sense of what to expect at a meeting. But as I say, it hasn't been effective so far this week. I don't know if giving away a PDF. I mean, one thing I'm very.
Leafbox: No, I was joking about that.
I was just joking. Yeah. No, don't give your PDFs away. Your work's valuable, but maybe I wonder why you have so many, not pen names, but you switch the names of projects. I wonder why you do that. Is that just putting on different masks or what, what that's about?
Jasun: You mean new websites? I keep changing websites.
Leafbox: Yeah, I found you through the Land Made Man and that website was so hard to use. You had to sign up and it was just technical challenges to get to, for me, that was a problem for me. But then once you got on Substack, oh, this is easy to, it all works, you know, so.
Well, yeah, so that's where I've landed at Substack and the Land Made Man is all dysfunctional right now and I haven't even bothered to fix it.
But before that it was Autoculture, and before that it was Autoculture at WordPress, and before that it was Autoculture at WordPress.
Jasun: Stormy weather, Blogspot. Oh, Aelescaphus. blogspot and Vagabond or Movie Blues or Vagabond Blues, I forget which one.
Blogspot, so I was using Blogspot. Before that I had divinevirus. com before that I had Crow Enterprises. So yeah, I've had many websites and many names. I haven't been consistent. But that's part of being protean, you know, a snake that keeps shedding its skin. It's not, it's not really by conscious choice.
I just, I can't keep beating and banging the same drum.
Leafbox: Which I guess ties into what my question is, how do you keep that beginner spirit then? Yeah, it seems like you're on this path that you're not on, on a trail that you're not walking, searching for something that you don't know what you're searching for.
But how do you keep that beginners? How do you keep motivated to keep walking?
Jasun: Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a good question because discouragement is very, very much on the menu. I would say like, I, I've been so discouraged over the years. I can't believe how accustomed I've got to be just being discouraged, but also I can't believe that I still.
I'm susceptible, like this week, today even, I'm like really pissed off that people didn't respond but I set myself up week after week and I, and and so I have that experience of discouraging that, oh, I'll just give up. I was thinking there might be an analogy with the goats, you know, so I was thinking trying to get people to come to these meetings seems to be like trying to contain the goats, you know, it's, Not exact because I don't have a problem getting the goats to go somewhere so much But I do have a problem getting them to stay somewhere So it's close and you know goats are not sheep.
Goats are famous for being unruly this is like a herd of cats even like I'm trying to herd cats because But anyway, so maybe there's an analogy or a comparison or a parallel there But whatever the case, anyway, to your question I think that's part of the process is that you find out that whatever your mind tells you you need in order to get validated and inspired to carry on, it doesn't.
Right? Because a number of times I've said, fuck this, I'm not going to try this anymore because nobody cares and nobody's paying attention. And it's like, you know, the longer, the older I get, the more that voice can have apparent authority because it can say, Jason, you've been doing this for over 30 years and you still can't get more than five people to show up at a meeting.
You are a total failure. Just give up right now. Like there's a lot, it's got a lot of evidence to base its conclusions on. But the thing is, is even if I believe that voice and say, yeah, you're right, and fuck them all, I'm just not going to do it anymore. The next day I wake up and I, and I find myself, you know, arranging a meeting and writing an email.
I'm like, I'm doing it again. And I don't even know why. And it's not, fortunately, it's not like, I'm so desperate. I've got to make it. It's just, no, well, just keep trying. I go, it's not like it isn't worth it as a thing. I mean,
Leafbox: You're tuning into some ether message that's telling you to do it, right?
Jasun: I, well, that's what I would have to say, but I was going to just keep it personal and experiential, which is that the failures have been rewarding enough. Right? I had this idea that, oh, this would be great if it went this way, and it goes that way, oh, that was a failure, but it was, compared to the way I thought it should have gone, but it was still rewarding.
So if I have a meeting and only four people show up, I usually find it was worth having the meeting. Usually. Last week I'm not entirely sure, especially seeing as nobody showed up. Nobody's emailed from that meeting because there were three new people. So I thought, well, at least I brought some new people in, even if the meeting wasn't that great.
But anyway, it's, you know, it's too soon to say, but the thing is, is I quite enjoyed it. That's the thing. The older I get, the more available I make myself actually, because I, I used to play hard to get a lot in some ways, but now I'm just like, well, I've got a lot of time. Let's just find out who's out there and you know, what kind of connections are out there that need to be discovered.
This is the thing. I mean, finding the real connections, you've got to go through a whole bunch of faulty connections. So as long as there's enough, you know, lights that light up. You know, each time you try the Christmas tree or whatever, you, you just keep trying because there's a new light over time. It doesn't seem to be building if I look over the last 30 years, but that's because it comes in cycles. So I've had periods where things really came together and then I just, I packed up and moved on, so to speak. I changed website, what have you, and then I start again. So currently it's kind of, I mean, Substack's been doing well, but then it's, it's plateaued. I don't understand it. But something's happened at Substack where I keep getting free subscribers, but I'm not getting paid subscribers.
No idea what's happened there, but it's quite interesting. And then with the groups, well, you, you come to the Manopticon so you know, it's quite rare to get new people currently, but there is a consistency in the people who are coming. So that's, that's, that's valuable. That's as or more valuable perhaps than, than getting new people in.
The Role of Mentorship
Leafbox: One of the interesting things is when you were younger, you were looking, I guess, for mentors and teachers, and now you're becoming a teacher and a mentor. How do you find the difference in that role?
Jasun: Well, yes. I mean, I don't, I don't know what you think, but because you've used those terms.
A mentor and teacher aren't the same. You know, and anyone who has experience that's worthwhile to share, you could say is teaching. But I would say that I actively try to avoid being a teacher because I don't have anything specific to teach, right? I'm not teaching people how to write or how to build a website.
Or how to keep goats, or stuff, or carpentry, stuff I actually know that I could say do this and do that. I certainly can't teach anyone how to live, so what am I teaching, it's not, it's not very clear. I would say I'm teaching, or I'm modeling directness, honesty. frankness transparency, a certain quality of clear communication, there are definitely certain qualities that I model and then it translates into the writing as well, whatever you said about the writing, you said it helped you to, to let go of things, but that, is it a hair split for me to say that's the difference between modeling something and teaching something?
Leafbox: So then with my other word I use is mentoring. Do you see yourself as a, you've had some mentees and how was that relationship? And maybe you've broken some relationships with your mentors in a while.
Jasun: I have, yeah, I have for sure.
Leafbox: The homeless guy in San Francisco and who else? David Oshana?
Jasun: But broken with John DeRuto.
Obviously that was more acrimonious. This mentor in Guatemala. We're just falling out of touch. Obviously the parasocial ones, Whitley Strieber, Castaneda. I've ended up, you know, rejecting most of my teachers if they ever wear that. Maybe that's partly why I don't want to be that for somebody else.
But mentoring I mean, obviously there's Ruben, who you know about, and I did the podcast with. He seemed a case of somebody who actually would want and need to be mentored, and I could be in that role because there's such an age gap, but if it's somebody who, like yourself, who's only 10 or 15 years younger, it's not so clear that you want or need a mentor, so I'm not sure that There are any cases I could say besides Ruben, and that's that's on hold pretty much now, that that are really official mentoring, really.
Again, I'm just modeling, I'm trying to get something happening, and people are participating and they're getting what they get. If somebody says, I see you as a mentor, well, Aaron, I think Aaron saw me as a mentor in the men's group. And he, I think he's sort of emerging from it and he's finding ways to develop that relationship so he doesn't have me in that role.
So, so yeah, I guess he's an example of somebody where that seems to have happened. So there's probably more that I don't know about.
Leafbox: Yeah, I guess maybe mentor is the wrong term. Maybe, you're building your posse, your horseback riding, right? So you're looking for other people to ride the trail with.
Jasun: As long as they're, they want to ride, yeah.
But there's no guarantee that they'll be there the next time I look around.
Filmmaking, Group's, Future Projects
Leafbox: Jason, my last question is, how was we could talk a lot about other things, but how's your film coming, and what's the status, and what's happening with that?
Jasun: Well, I just finished the final cut today, more or less. I mean, I just put the credits in, so it's good timing for you to ask.
It's 26 and a half minutes long, The Light of Dead Stars, and I've been working quite hard on the sound recently. I'm just trying, I'm using a lot of sounds. I'm designing the sound and David Lynch just died, but he's, although he wasn't a mentor, and he's not somebody that I admire because he's a celebrity, but I do think his technique, I mean, you could say he was a teacher because his, his technique for using sound to create mood and atmosphere is something that I've tried to emulate while getting this into its final form.
So yeah, it's more or less done. So it's ready for, I mean, time for a second screening. And hopefully I'll set that up in the next couple of weeks. And then after that, I don't know, I don't really know what it's for. It's besides just, you know, what we've been talking about today, really, like, receiving and transmitting something that's in my psyche or it's come through my psyche so others can comment on it and receive something from it, whether it will lead to any sort of anything else, I don't know.
It's too soon to say, but if, if I did have an intention, it would be to try and find people in Spain because I don't want to be traveling around so try and find people in Spain to, to continue as some film projects. If, if, you know, If there are people to do that, because I do like the teamwork, as I say, I like the idea of having a team and working on something.
That to me is the fundamental value of anything like this, and filmmaking is the closest, it's the only art form, actually maybe the only one, besides music. So I'm never going to be in a band, but being a filmmaker could be a way to work with a team. But I don't know, I really don't know, we'll just have to see.
Leafbox: Great Jason, how do you feel?
Jasun: How do I feel? I feel like we've got into quite a lot and it was a, it was a free flowing conversation and I said some things I hadn't thought before, so I feel good about that. I know I haven't put the goats to bed, so I should do that. My bum's hurting a little bit, so it's probably good that you're ending. And I'm looking forward to just sitting by the fire and watching an episode of Boardwalk Empire or something like that.
Leafbox: Great. Anything else, Jason, you want to share today, or obviously I'll have links in it.
Jasun: Yeah, normally I pitch my the men's group, but we really talked about it and then we talked about what I want for that.
I always, well I don't always say, but one thing I do often say is the main reason for me to do an interview, a bit different here in this case because we already know each other, but is, is in the hope that just one new soul will come floating down into my neighborhood and I'll get to know them.
So I always hope I get an email or something. Yeah, so I'm just always trying, well, not always trying, but whenever there's an opportunity, I'm trying to send out beacons, you know, fire beacons into the sky and hope that somebody who's out there floating on the dark ocean, you know, shipwrecked, will see it and swim in this direction.
So, so that's, that's, that's essentially what I want to end on is if you're out there, send me a line, it's not a cult, just, just looking for good souls to connect to, and ask Robert where to come, and we have to subscribe to my Substack, which is Children of Job, and well, what goes on there is what we've talked about here today, really, I'm just trying, I'm trying to fathom the nature of reality, and well, so far, I haven't run out of angles from which to approach that invisible elephant.
Leafbox: Well, thank you very much, Jason, for your time today, and the goats are your, probably need you, so thank you very much.
Jasun: Thanks, Robert.
For more:
Children of Job by Jasun Horsley
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