Mnemonics

Deep Breathing

These exercises are personally curated and tested by me. They’re designed to help release tension from both mind and body, whether you’re looking for a daily grounding ritual or a quick way to ease panic or stress.

One

Sit comfortably in a chair. Rest your hands on your belly, cupped together like a bowl. Inhale for five seconds, letting your belly expand and fill the bowl. Exhale for five seconds, letting your belly deflate. Repeat ten times.

Two

Sit with your hands on your knees. Inhale as you arch your back and gently lean backward. Exhale as you round your spine and lean forward. Repeat ten times.

Three

Sit with your hands on your knees. Inhale and shift your weight to your right sit bone. Exhale and shift your weight to your left sit bone. Repeat ten times.

Four

Sit on your right hand. With your left hand, gently guide your head toward your left shoulder. Hold for ten seconds. Switch sides, sit on your left hand and stretch to the right. Repeat five times per side.

Five

On hands and knees, inhale as you arch your back. Exhale as you round your spine. Repeat ten times.

Six

Sit in a chair. Shift your weight fully to your right sit bone. Inhale as you move your weight to the left, making a forward semicircle with your upper body. Exhale as you return to the right, completing the circle by moving backward. Repeat ten times.

Seven

Stand with feet hip-width apart. Shift your weight to your right leg, bend the knee slightly, and exhale. Shift to your left leg, straightening the right knee, and inhale. Repeat ten times.

Eight

Stand with feet slightly apart. Exhale as you rock forward onto your toes. Inhale as you rock back onto your heels. Repeat ten times.

Nine

Imagine picking apples from a tree above you. Reach up with alternating arms. Stretch tall with each reach. Repeat ten times.

Ten

Cross your arms over your chest. Look over your left shoulder and gently twist your torso to the left. Hold for ten seconds. Repeat on the right side. Do five rounds.

Eleven

Place your hands, fingers interlaced, behind your head. Gently press your head back into your hands while resisting with your arms. Hold for ten seconds. Repeat ten times.

Ecology

Coal can be seen as the reason why the Industrial Revolution happened. It was first mined and burned on a large scale in Great Britain for the simple reason that the wood (that kept the cities warm and enabled them to produce products) was running out. An added benefit is that coal is much more energy-dense than wood, which was a reason why large-scale factories could be brought into operation.

Coal was everywhere, not just in factories (people burned it in their own homes for heating), to the point that it caused massive air pollution events. For example: the Great Smog of London. It lasted only four days, but it was estimated that up to four thousand people died as a direct result of the smog and another one hundred thousand became ill. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably higher, with estimates of between ten thousand and twelve thousand deaths.

A Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

Yet, for governments, all this industrialization also has its upsides, countries and companies become incredibly rich from it, and when they finally got rich, and perhaps feeling the pressure from the ordinary people who only experienced the disadvantages, the countries that had grown rich on coal could afford to get rid of it.

But this is just something that is affordable for the countries that have already gotten rich from it. Countries that are still developing cannot afford to drop coal. The amount of coal that Europe and North America have reduced has in fact been taken over by China. And who can blame them? They are simply leveling the playing field.

But it is not the case that Europe and North America have completely stopped using coal either. The recent war in Ukraine has caused many European countries to stop using Russian gas and are simply burning coal again as never before. Within a few years, one third of Germany’s energy was again generated from coal.

The Foreseeable Future

It is no longer a secret that the Earth is warming up. Coal created the modern world, but it will probably also be the end of the modern world. The reason for this is (it’s easy to make a Pandora’s box analogy here) that for many countries, fossil fuels remain the fastest and most scalable path to economic growth. It’s a way to make a buck and in a world where many countries have been doing this for centuries, you can’t afford to lag behind.

So, how do I see the foreseeable future? Can companies and countries stop using fossil fuels? Of course. Will they? Of course not. The earth will probably get much warmer and change for the worse, at least for us humans. Scarcity, lack of food and drinking water, and desertification. Governments and companies would rather throw the whole world into ashes than lose profits.

Gnosticism

Probably the best-known book from Plotinus’ Enneads is Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to Be Evil, better known today as Against the Gnostics. It is a book in which Plotinus attempts to distance his philosophy from the philosophy that we now retrospectively call Gnosticism, which he found incompatible with Plato’s thought.

A quick disclaimer: Gnosticism is a somewhat loaded term, encompassing a multitude of movements that sometimes have less in common than they do. However, a common thread in Gnosticism is the belief in Gnosis as a way to transcend (or escape) the current plane of existence to a higher plane of existence.

What makes Gnosticism so unique is that Gnostics generally saw our current plane of existence as flawed, created by a being who, rather than being good, is actually ignorant at best and downright evil at worst. Therefore, they argue, we must try to escape and circumvent the ways in which it holds us captive. This was a point of contention for Plotinus, who viewed the universe as inherently good. I agree with him, as usual.

The Problem of Evil

The Gnostics attempted to solve a philosophical problem arising from the religions from which these movements emerged, Judaism and Christianity. That is, if the world was created by an omniscient and inherently good creator, how can evil exist? There have been numerous solutions to this problem, of which this is an early one.

Unfortunately, this is precisely why the fate of Gnosticism was set in stone shortly after its inception. It clashed aggressively with virtually every philosophy, and perhaps more importantly, every religion popular at the time.

Destruction and Revival

Gnostic writings flourished among certain early Christian groups until, perhaps unsurprisingly, they were condemned as heresy by the Church Fathers. Attempts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting in the survival of very few Gnostic texts. At least, until short after the Second World War, when a collection of Gnostic manuscripts was found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt.

The discovery and translation of these ancient works coincided with new occult movements in Europe. These, in turn, were inspired by these new findings and eventually radiated their influence into the general zeitgeist, reviving Gnostic thought among the general public.

Neoplatonism

There are questions we will never be able to answer. Where do we come from? Where are we going? How did it all begin? And how will it all end? There will never be any definitive answers, let alone a scientific consensus. Nevertheless, if you look deeply within yourself, there are universal truths to be found. The details will vary from person to person and especially from one doctrine to another, but in general terms, they will be correct.

Plotinus

The person who, in my opinion, has come closest to understanding the true nature of existence is the Platonic philosopher Plotinus. I do not call myself a Platonist (although I enjoy reading Plato and Platonists) because I prefer not to confine myself to dogmas or rigid frameworks. Although, of course, maneuvering through restrictions can also help you generate new ideas and delve deeper into yourself than ever before.

Plotinus, a student of the mysterious Ammonius Saccas, built upon the works of Platonists before him to redefine Platonism. Most inspired by Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides, he built a metaphysical system that influenced almost all Platonists after him.

The One

According to Plotinus, it all began with what he called the One. Totally transcendent, containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction. Beyond all categories of being and non-being. The One is the source of the universe, but not through any act of creation, but through emanation.

Imagine a ray radiating from a light source, heat spreading from fire, cold issuing from snow, or a scent wafting from an odorous substance. The One is like a spring from which water eternally gushes out. The One remains in itself, in its perfection. Yet, from it, from this overflowing perfection, something else proceeds. The One overflows, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. Just like a fire, for instance, from whose inner activity (burning), the activity of warming the surrounding environment necessarily derives.

This procession finds its counterpart in a movement of return towards the source and cause. According to Plotinus, the true cause is always the final one. It is by reuniting with its cause that that which issues from it, and which is, as it is, deficient, can truly realize its own nature. And it is this desire to realize one’s own nature that leads to this reuniting.

Given that this movement of return springs from a desire and sense of deficiency, the thing generated must somehow be aware of its separation and acknowledge itself as distinct from its source. And at the moment of return, the thing generated thus produces its own interpretation of the generating cause. It is at this stage that a new order of reality is produced.

The Intellect

Out of the overflowing potential of the One comes something, which becomes the Intellect. The One does not generate the Intellect. The One gives birth to something undifferentiated, which therefore is not the Intellect yet, but will become it. Not by virtue or arbitrary activity, but because it constitutes itself as the intellect through a movement of return to its own origin.

The Intellect fragments the original simplicity into the multiplicity of Forms. The multiplicity of Forms that constitute the Intellect, and which forms the model for physical reality, is not something inherent in the One, but something that is produced by the act of the Intellect to return to its source.

The Soul

In relation to the Intellect, the hypostasis of the Soul marks a further descent into multiplicity and fragmentation. As something intelligible, the Soul remains immaterial, unextended, and free from spatial conditioning. However, its activity unfolds in the world of matter.

The Soul therefore forms the link between the intelligible realm of Forms and the sensible world. It represents the intelligible plane responsible for the sensible world and ensures the unity of all. Therefore, we should not think that the Soul is locked up in bodies, for it is the bodies that are locked up in the Soul.

The Sensible World

After the Soul comes the world of matter, the lowest point in the Plotinian system. The physical universe, however, is still produced by the Soul. And its agency makes the universe something harmonious and partaker of a higher beauty. However imperfect, the physical universe is still an image of the divine realm. It remains a reflection of higher realities.

Nondualism

There are certain moments in history that can be said to have changed the way a large group of people thought, and there is no better example of this than the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement in Europe that roughly coincided with the eighteenth century and from which most of our modern ideas come.

The origins of this movement can be found in France, with the philosopher René Descartes. Via the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza the movement came to Germany, which eventually led to one of the founders of modern philosophy, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Although the terms phenomenon and noumenon were popularized among modern audiences by Kant, Descartes had already formulated a distinction between the two.

Mind and Body

Descartes is known as the philosopher who popularized the dualism of mind and body. In short: he created a distinction between the mind or consciousness and the physical brain. A distinction that is widespread today, but he was one of the first philosophers to write down and popularize this idea. He placed consciousness at the center of identity, but also isolated it from the physical world. This dualism laid the groundwork for modern science, but at a cost. It fragmented our sense of wholeness.

Most people used to think there was no distinction between normal and paranormal. In the centuries before, people considered the physical and the spiritual as part of the same world. With this distinction Descartes created two worlds. The first, a purely mechanical world. This is the world we experience and live in. The second, a spiritual world. This is the world that we cannot see and that is hidden beyond the veil.

A Different View

The most important and influential philosopher before the Enlightenment was Aristotle. Aristotle saw animals as beings that were initiated by fantasy, sensations and desire. According to him, they have souls. Descartes, however, saw these movements as purely mechanical. Descartes even went so far as to speak of human machines, rather than human beings. These are all thoughts that would go unnoticed if someone were to say them today. The world became mechanical and thus, for better or for worse, gave way to our modern world.

I, however, vehemently disagree with Descartes and do not believe in his dualistic worldview. I believe this split between mind and body has led to a fragmented understanding of human experience. Consciousness is not separate from the body, it is embodied, relational, and inseparable from the world around us. Nondual traditions, both ancient and modern, offer a more integrated view that resonates more deeply with lived experience.

Platonic Forms

A relatively well-known idea of Plato is his allegory of the cave, which appears in his work Republic. In this allegory, Plato describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their necks and ankles to an inner wall, facing the empty outer wall of the cave.

They observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall by objects carried behind the inner wall by people invisible to the chained prisoners, who walk along the inner wall with a fire behind them, creating the shadows on the inner wall for the prisoners. The object bearers speak the names of the objects, the sounds of which are echoed near the shadows and are understood by the prisoners as if they were coming from the shadows themselves.

Only the shadows and sounds are the prisoners’ reality, which are not accurate representations of the true reality. The shadows represent distorted and blurred copies of the reality that we can perceive with our senses. The goal, then, is to free yourself from the cave by realizing that the shadows on the wall are not the true reality, but merely a reflection or interpretation.

What Hides Beyond the Veil

The allegory is related to Plato’s theory of Forms, according to which Forms (and not the material world we know through sensation) possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. According to this theory, Forms are the nonphysical, timeless, absolute, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the physical world merely imitate, resemble, or participate in.

The Forms are perfect and unchanging representations of objects and qualities. For example: the Form of plant-being. We can all picture in our minds a plant. However, this picture is far from perfect. It is only through the intelligibility of the Form that we know that this picture is a plant, because this Form is perfect and unchanging.

These Forms are the essence of various objects. They are that without which a thing would not be the kind of thing it is. For example: there are innumerable plants in the world, but the Form of plant-being is the core. It is the essence of them all. Plato claimed that the world of Forms is the essential basis of reality and transcendent of our world, the world of substances.

Furthermore, he believed that true knowledge and intelligence is the ability to grasp the world of Forms with one’s mind. Thus, studying reality itself is like peering through the bars of a prison.

Platonism

Platonism is named after the Greek philosopher Plato and his philosophy. Plato was one of Socrates’ students and since Socrates himself never wrote anything down, we only know what others wrote about him. Plato wrote dialogues in which Socrates more often than not played the leading role.

In these dialogues he spoke to his students, or sometimes to complete strangers, about almost every conceivable subject. However, when people talk about Platonism, they are usually referring to the metaphysical dialogues written by Plato and later expanded upon by others, including Plotinus.

The most complete description of Plato’s metaphysics is found in the Timaeus, a book that is the culmination of his life’s work.

The Elements and the World Soul

According to the Timaeus, the universe was created by a transcendent god called the Craftsman. He gave the universe a body in the form of a sphere by fashioning it from four elements: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The visible and tangible body of the universe was made possible by binding these elements together in the right proportions.

The Craftsman also created the World Soul to provide movement for the universe. The World Soul was created from three parts: Sameness, Difference, and Existence, which were bound together in exact proportions. Two strips of the World Soul’s substance were formed into rings that crossed each other in the shape of an X, representing the celestial equator and ecliptic.

The Planets and Human Souls

Within these rings, the Craftsman created seven planetary rings or spheres, whose distance from the Earth depended on their apparent speed of motion. The Moon was closest, followed by the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These planets became the heavenly gods, subordinate to the Craftsman.

In creating the planets, the Craftsman also created time itself, since the planets control the days, months, and seasons. The traditional gods of the Greeks, Plato supposed, were created by the planetary gods, whose existence is more certain since they could actually be seen.

The Craftsman also created the souls of men from the same ingredients used for the World Soul (though in a diluted form), one for each star in the sky. These souls are implanted into bodies according to the dictates of Necessity and if a person lives a righteous life by controlling the passions that have been imposed upon him, his soul travels back to his consort star after death. Since the Craftsman could only create perfect, immortal things, the bodies of human mortals had to be made by the planetary deities, who were also tasked with governing and guiding humanity.

Transcendence

The mortal body is then formed by the gods who borrow from the elements for this purpose. This loan must be repaid when the person dies. Here we see the origin of the idea that souls could ascend to a celestial realm, rather than descend to the underworld.

Plato’s Craftsman is a benevolent being who made the cosmos good by endowing it with soul and reason. Thus the entire cosmos functions according to the Craftsman’s foresight, called Providence. The only allowance for evil is that human souls are implanted in bodies that have to overcome various earthly influences in order to live righteously.

Politics

In the last few years of the twentieth century, North American author Francis Fukuyama published his most famous book, The End of History and the Last Man. In this book, he argues that with the rise of modern liberal democracies (which occurred shortly after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union) humanity has not only reached a certain period of postwar history, but also reached the end of history.

That is, the end point of humanity’s ideological evolution and the universalization of modern liberal democracies as the ultimate form of government. Fukuyama argues (like G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx before him) that history should be seen as an evolutionary process and that modern liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. And he believes that this is a positive thing.

Although I believe that Hegel and Marx are wrong and that history should not be seen as an evolutionary process, I do agree with Fukuyama that it seems as if the ultimate form of government has been created. But unlike him, I see this so-called final form not as a triumph, but as inherently evil.

A Struggle for Power

Since the French Revolution, most of the old monarchies have thankfully been removed from their actual positions of power, leaving a power vacuum that has since been filled with new power-hungry authoritarian elites. And now that they have gained this power, they will of course do everything they can to never lose it.

The introduction of ever more authoritarian laws, the abuse of populism through propaganda tools that the old monarchies could only dream of, the complete abolition of privacy, the massive use of extremely well-researched brainwashing techniques, and the encouragement of infighting to ensure that the people (who have become increasingly docile) will never distrust their authority, but only each other. All this is accompanied by mass surveillance techniques used by both the autocratic and the democratic regimes.

These populist techno-authoritarian plutocracies, as they now exist in most countries around the world, have developed forms of power retention so stringent that they are likely to persist until the inevitable environmental collapse.

Stress

When explaining stress or hyperventilation, the well-known comparison of the lion standing in front of the hunter is often used. Once the hunter notices the lion, his body will do everything it can to make him more alert and give him the physical ability to do what is necessary to survive, to either kill the lion or to run away. His heart rate increases and his breathing quickens. In other words, he is hyperventilating and the stressor, the cause, is the lion.

This comparison is used to explain why the body does what it does during stress or hyperventilation. After the incident with the lion, the hunter will need to rest and de-stress. He returns home and waits until the hyperventilation process subsides.

Modern-Day Lions

But what happens to a body when the lion does not go away, but continues to chase you and keeps you in constant tension? Resting is no longer an option and the stress becomes constant. Although your body is built to tolerate short periods of stress between long periods of rest, it is not built to do the opposite.

This is what most of our contemporary lives consist of. Stress due to work, school, expectations of others, and uncertainty about whether enough food can be bought this month. And with a bit of luck, this stress will be interrupted only once a year by a two-week holiday. Your body no longer has the opportunity to rest, or better said, you no longer give your body the chance to rest. At least, until your body forces you to rest, and that happens via a hyperventilation attack or a burnout.

The art of surviving contemporary life is to prevent this. To find peace and avoid the stressors or simply remove them from your life. Change jobs, end an unhappy relationship, and avoid the people who make you unhappy instead of happy. Take days off to take care of yourself in whatever form that takes. Take a walk in the woods, sleep in, take a bath, or book a hotel for an evening and be taken care of at a restaurant. Do whatever makes you happy and gives you the ability to de-stress your body.