Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 383: Mitch Horowitz

Episode Date: May 9, 2020

Mitch Horowitz, occult author and DTFH favorite, rejoins the DTFH! You can learn more about Mitch on his website, and read his article, Forgiveness: A Dissent. This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

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That was beautiful. Thank you. It was my pleasure. My friends, we have got a glorious podcast for you today. The great Mitch Horowitz is here. We're going to jump right into that. But first, this. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode

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Well, I'm bummed about the pandemic for many reasons. But one of them is, you know, you start making friends with somebody and you figure I'll be hanging out with him and then fucking pandemic and you don't get to see him in person. Mitch Horowitz is an author. He has written many, many great books, including Occult America and The Miracle Club. He recently wrote a really brilliant, very controversial

article for Medium called Forgiveness, A Descent. And we talk about that in this episode of the DTFH. He also is a great public speaker. And if he's ever in your area after the pandemic ends, you should definitely go listen to him, give one of his amazing talks on esoteric topics and the occult. All the links you need to find Mitch

are going to be at dunkintrustle.com, including a link to his Medium article, not to give you homework, but maybe read it before you listen to this conversation. Now, everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell family, our podcast, Mitch Horowitz. Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us, shake hands, no need to be blue, welcome to you.

It's the Dunkin' Trussell family. What is that sigil behind you, by the way, just so I don't have to think about it? Oh, that is a sigil that was created by the Temple of Psychic Youth, Tope, Genesis Peorage, and Jacqueline is making a documentary about the life of Genesis, and that was something that Genesis had designed.

They were, that tote bag was like a giveaway to people who contributed to a Kickstarter campaign for the film. Cool. Yeah, good to see you. Okay, let me, good to see you, damn this pandemic. I know, is it not a motherfucker? Your kid's okay, I take it? Yeah, thank you for asking, my kid's great.

How's yours? They're fine. How many sons do you have? Two boys, two boys, 13 and 15, they're fine, they're fine. I was sick, I had it, but I'm doing well. You got COVID? Yeah, I did. What's it like?

Oh, it sucks, the thing that really sucked for me, and listen, I can't complain because I had a mild case of it, but it lingers, the fucker lingers, you know, and it's like you think to yourself, okay, I'll sleep, I'll rest, I'll be appropriate, I'll knock it out of me in two weeks, now six weeks, six weeks, and it really lingers when it gets its claws into you, and I'm one of the lucky ones, because my case was quite mild.

Oh my God, it's really weird, because we're now at this, you know, I was listening to a NPR interview, and someone was saying that, I guess she'd written a piece called, you know, something about, it's Georgia's experiment in human sacrifice, because they're reopening Georgia. Oh yeah. A lot of people are going to die, because they're reopening, but also, it's also an experiment in human sacrifice

to not reopen, in the sense, you know, it's another way of killing people, because it's so unnatural for us to be stuck in our houses, and people don't have jobs, and they're going insane, so no matter what, we have been, it's so bizarre, that in some crazy way, we have all been forced into deciding how we want to do this weird game of Russian roulette, which is do we wait for people to go broke, and, you know, people who are being

abused in their homes, to get murdered, or do we let everybody out, and then we just know a certain number of people are just going to die, or going to get sick and die. Right. It's such a terrible decision. It's true. What do you think is the right move? I wish I knew, I wish I knew.

I mean, all I can say is that, in shoulder to shoulder conditions in New York City, and with two kids in the house, I guess I err on the side of extreme caution. Yeah. At the same time, I'm also lucky, because, I mean, sure, it's inconvenient for me, but I have writing deadlines, and I have other things, so I've taken a hit, but it's not like it deprives me of my livelihood.

Right. If I was deprived of my livelihood, I would have a probably different perception. Yeah. Yeah, that's the craziest part of it, is you see people who have so much privilege. Yeah. Like saying, stay at your house.

Right. Don't go out. And it's like, yeah. For me, your shrill attack, or yelling at me, it's annoying, but yeah, I'll stay at my house. I can't, I podcast. I can, right, right. I'm friends with a barber, one of my best friends is a barber,

and he can't open his shop. And if he does open his shop, he's got to worry about getting sick, because he's going to be around people, and his employees getting sick and stuff, but it just seems like most of the people saying, stay inside. They're in a place where they can stay inside. Yeah, that's actually a very good point.

I wish. I mean, I just don't have the slightest idea. I mean, I think probably by the middle of this month, we're going to start to reopen on a rolling basis, regardless. People are going to start to just reintegrate into society, especially as the weather is nice. It's very, very hard to feel threatened

when it's 70 degrees outside and the sun is shining, and you feel OK. And it's probably just going to happen. It's just going to happen. Well, let's get this podcast going. Let's do it. I want to start with some COVID conversation. People are fucking sick of it.

Aren't they? Let's dive in. Yeah, yeah. One second. Mitch Warwitz, welcome back to the DTFH. It is so great to see you. Likewise, man. How you doing?

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Today was a mother, because like everybody else on Earth, I'm adjusting to the new reality that we're in. And I've been lucky. But it goes day by day. Today was a tough day. And we've got to be frank about this.

People in this culture who are regarded as thought leaders and spirituality have to drop the mask and talk about the ways that they're vulnerable and suffering and sad. And this was a motherfucker of a day for me. But I'm feeling better seeing you. And I hope your listeners are feeling good. I mean, I know that people are going through a lot of trauma.

And some days, it's OK. And some days, it's tough. And we're all living with a big question mark. Man, I know what you mean. It's like there is this. I think that's one of the I'm sure you experience this a lot. You can find yourself being shoved in to some horrific cubby hole if you're not careful.

Where people, yeah, they want you to be perfect. They want you to be not, they want you to demonstrate all of their super ego, all the qualities of their super ego. They want to project that on you and for you to demonstrate it. And if you don't, you know, they get severely disappointed in you. You know, and I like I do feel like, especially your POV and your voice, what I love about it is its realism.

What I love about it is how pragmatic you are when you talk about these like very big ideas. And I think people it's good for people to hear that because the last thing anybody needs right now is someone pretending they're doing great and they're somehow adapting to a global pandemic when inside they're going completely fucking nuts. Because that is them. That to me, I can't think of anything more malevolent than putting

that out there in the world. Oh, no, I'm doing great when inside you're losing your shit. Right. And a great many people. And I know because I've seen the sausages being made, a great many people who are regarded as thought leaders in the spiritual culture on any given day, any given Tuesday, when there's not a pandemic, when there's not a tragedy, they fall to pieces just with regular

everyday anxiety. And we have to get past this theater that people are permitted to project in front of their congregations or in front of their audiences. I feel it's very important that I show vulnerability to anybody who wants to pick up one of my books, anybody who wants to listen to me on any topic. Not because I want to be morbidly self-disclosing, but because I'm perpetuating a lie if I indicate to any listener

or anybody that I meet that somehow I'm the man with the plan, you know, and that all these spiritual ideas are just making everything great for me. I'm a seeker and I have my successes and I have my failures in terms of trying to lead a powerful and self-directed existence. But I do find that there's so much theatricality with therapists, with ministers, with spiritual authors. And we don't have time for theatricality anymore in our world.

And I also I mean, I call out therapists to the therapist, the minister, the spiritual leader, people like me, you know, who talk on podcasts. We're all engaged in this kind of theater because we're showing our best selves. We're comfortable in public. And whenever I hear a friend coming to me and says, you know, my shrink says I should do this. My shrink says I should do that. My question is, is your shrink doing that?

Is your shrink demonstrating that in his or her lived experience? Of course not. Of course not. You know, we all are sort of operating from the same place. And I think we need to start thinking in terms of one another as co-seekers. There should be mutual respect, but as co-seekers, because you've had the experience of interviewing dozens upon dozens of people who were regarded as thought leaders, motivational leaders, therapeutic voices. And I'm sure you've had the same experience where, you know,

you catch one of these guys getting cut off in traffic or a waiter, getting their order wrong or their french fries coming, you know, not well done enough. And they freak out, you know, and I think. OK, wait, let me tell you something that happened to me once. This is the opposite. I was so I was like, I got cut off in traffic. I swear to God, Mitch, it's so funny you say that. Or I cut someone off in traffic.

I think I cut someone off in traffic. I was in a hurry and I cut someone off. Yeah, I don't know. I wasn't thinking. I don't know why I was. I was being a dick in traffic. So I get later that day. I got a Twitter message from someone being like, hey, you fucking cut me off in traffic, you fraud. I'm like, I have definitely done a great disservice to.

I was thinking like, what have I done? Yeah, that I have conveyed over the course of my podcast, the impression that I don't cut people off in traffic from time to time. Right, right. Like, I think it's more likely this person had not listened to enough episodes of the podcast because I try to disclose. Absolutely. Most anything I can.

Because I don't I do God forbid somebody should start thinking you're the type of person who doesn't fuck up. Right. God, what a hellscape to find yourself in. But it was really shocking to realize that this person had put me on. It had done something that I've read is considered an aggression, which is to put someone on a pedestal. That's considered one of the most aggressive things you can do to someone is ask them to partake in that shitty game of make believe. It's horrible.

It's it's horrible. And it's also one of the reasons why I actually don't block anybody on social media, including the guy who five minutes before the show called me a freemasonic child killer, because I feel like, first of all, if I block people, getting blocked is like giving a scalp to a troll. You know, trolls live for getting blocked. So you don't want to give them that little trophy. But more important than that.

There may be, you know, one out of a hundred of these people who misjudge, who name call, who mud sling, who are violent, who are cruel, who are miserable, one out of a hundred who might actually see that, you know, you've never projected a fake image to the public. I hope I haven't projected a fake image to the public. If somebody sees me lose my shit or somebody sees me behave like an asshole or be rude, then they can call me out and they can say to me, you know, you insulted me, you put me down, and I will hear them and I will listen to them

and I will weigh it. But I would never want to project the falsehood, the fraud that a person who doesn't do that. And I worked in spiritual publishing for many, many years, and I would have people come into my office crying because they had just got torn a new asshole by somebody who spent 30 years in meditation or somebody who calls himself a spiritual activist. May that word be erased from the fucking lexicon.

And I hosted this little talk show called One Simple Idea, which was like a streaming New Age talk show. I probably interviewed, I don't know, 13, 14 spiritual leaders, some famous, some not, of those interviews. I would say two were authentic, two were authentic. And the rest were just bullshit. We're just somebody giving these 15 minute platitudinous answers. And I thought to myself and I, Duncan, I wasn't brave enough to do it.

I wasn't brave enough to do it. But I remember one of the people who's giving me these 15 minute answers. I kept wanting to jump in and say to him, I know you personally and I know your life and I know you get pissed off when your books don't appear on The New York Times bestseller list. You get furious, fairly well known person. Yeah. And he's projecting an image to me and to the listeners of non-attachment, non-identification,

thoughts without a thinker, the observer, looking at the thought, looking at the individual. But all of that, it's fraud because it's not enacted when the person experiences pressure on Tuesday afternoon at two thirty. When the person learns that your book that is sold really well didn't make it on The New York Times list. And maybe that's not fair. Maybe that's not fair.

Maybe it's because somebody likes the political commentator more than they like the new age guy, and that does go on. But you got to take a hit once in a while. And I knew that this person, when he takes a hit, he gets very fucking angry and emotional. But he wasn't showing that to me and my listeners. And I thought, how's that? How's that helping anybody? How's that helping us dig?

So I want to try to be transparent. I don't want to perpetuate that. Yeah, man, you know the story of Ram Dass in the porn theater? That's familiar to me, but tell me, because I forgot it. He he tells a story of how he he'd gotten back from India. He'd written B here now. He's in line to go into a porn theater, I think in either New York or San Francisco. Right. And somebody walks by and sees him

and doesn't somehow doesn't realize this the setting just because they're taking like, holy shit, it's Ram Dass. He wrote B here now. Yeah. And they're like, Ram Dass, your book, it changed my life. Oh, my God, I just want to thank you. I so much I have to say to you. And he like he talks about how he had this moment where he realized that he could say to the person, let's go talk at a cafe.

Yeah, you know, he could try. He could try to evade what he was actually doing. Yeah. And be the act like Ram Dass to this person. Right. But he knew that the moment he did that, he was setting up. He was what he was doing. It was it was a nightmare for him and for that person. Because like you're saying, it's like completely not true. So he I wish I could find this lecture when he was talking about it.

But what he said to the guy is like, thank you so much. I would love to talk to you, but I'm going in here right now. You know, I'm going in this theater. Yeah. And I love that. That has always been a model for me because because it's it's for me, as far as Ram Dass goes, that's when I really connected to him. Yes. It's like, OK, you're admitting you go to porn theaters. Right. Right. I don't even go to porn theaters.

Right. You know what I mean? That's like, OK, that's not true. I've been to like two porn theaters, I'll be honest. But like, you know, I mean, it's partly generational. You know, but I was curious, who goes in here? What are you going to do? Who does this? There's the internet. What are you going to jerk off in a booth?

OK, I'll try to see what happens. It was actually kind of exciting. But my point is like that, that to me was such a cool, powerful, empowering thing for him to put out in the world. Because so many of us are tormenting ourselves with this myth, mythological. What's the name of it? What's the cool name for like a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster? What are they called?

What are they called those things? Crypt, what's that? Yeti Sasquatch. No, there's a there's an overarching name for mysterious animals. It's a cryptozoology or something. Yeah, sure. I don't. Anyway, the point is like, it's like there's a Bigfoot. We have a spiritual Bigfoot among us,

something that you know people who've met them, but you've never met them. Right, which is this perfect being wandering through the spiritual forest. Right, that like you've never laid eyes on, but you keep hearing about it. And then you I think your encounter with these people through your your job has been you've like over and over and over again. You've witnessed the reality of their humanness, which you don't have a problem with their humanness. No, your problem is they have a problem with their humanness.

Yes, and dig this like if I could ask if Ron Duss was still alive. And I could ask him one question and I felt assured that he would answer my questions sincerely because I don't want to ask him or anybody else a question unless it's going to be answered bluntly. What I would really want to say to him is Ron Duss. I know all about serious ESP research. I know all about neuroplasticity. I know all about quantum theory, at least as a student.

I know there's an extra physical dimension to life. I know that spirituality insofar as it's the extra physical is real. I know that. But what I want to ask you, Ron Duss, is this 40 years of meditation. Was it was it worth it? Did it make any difference? Did it really make a difference to the people who are around you every day? You know, did it make a difference in their life?

Did it make a difference in your life? And I mean concretely on Tuesday at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I'd like to get a blunt answer to that. I really would. Have you seen Fierce Grace? No, I know of it. It's great. It's good. You should watch it. It's so good.

Yeah, it's about a stroke. But he one of the things he says is like he has a stroke and he's been preparing his whole life, you know, meditation is the preparation for death. Yeah, he has a stroke. And basically he says nothing, nothing, nothing happened. Like there was no he it's it's almost an answer to your question, at least in that moment, which is that in that moment, he freely said all this work I've been doing seemed to really not matter in that in that moment.

And, you know, to me, that again, that's like, wow, holy shit, how cool here is a person. And by the way, I'm not sure that you could even say that he was a proponent of meditation because if you look at many of his talks on meditation, he sometimes says, don't meditate. Don't he he said he's don't inflict it on yourself. He seems to be more in that camp, you know, where there is the meditating that the I don't know what you call it, people who advise meditation like some kind of aerobic exercise or something like that. Yes, yes, yes.

He seems to be more in the there's a great conversation between Krishna Murti and Chogyam, Trump or Rinpoche. And he seems to be more in the Krishna Murti camp where he's basically Krishna Murti says to Chogyam, Trump, why are you telling everybody to meditate? There's enough problems in life. You're going to add this extra thing people have to do. And Trump, there's a beautiful dialogue between the two. But yeah, I think I don't know what he would say to that.

But I think he would probably he probably I don't remember him ever doing. I could answer with this weird story. When people were hanging out with his guru, Nirmal Baba, they would go off to do vipassana retreats. And the story is they would come back from the retreats. And one of the things Nirmal Baba said to them is. Did you learn how to meditate? And then he did like a impression of meditating and just laughed really hard.

I I dig that, you know, I dig that. Now, in as much as we can prove anything by statistics, we've proven that ESP exists. I mean, I could walk through the data. I won't convince any skeptic. No skeptic would look at it. He would smash Galileo's telescope. So that's not going to be very productive conversation.

But you know, I read about this in the Miracle Club and other places. I could walk through all the data. And we possess evidence in as much as statistics can prove anything that there is anomalous transfer of information in laboratory settings. ESP, telepathy and so on. We can prove through neuroplasticity that thoughts alter brain chemistry, which in and of itself upends materialism. I mean, materialism doesn't work because the central thesis of materialism

and it is a thesis is that matter recreates itself, matter recreates itself and that there is no. There's no intelligence outside of localized brain impulses. And when the brain is gone, your intellect, your psyche is gone, just like bubbles are gone and a glass of carbonated water when the water is gone. That does not hold up because what we see in neuroplasticity and that's just one very elementary field that's not controversial is that sustained thoughts alter brain chemistry.

So we're at a point in our generation where people can hold on to whatever beliefs they want, but materialism no longer covers the basis of life. So nobody needs to come to me and say, hey, man, spirituality is real. I know it's real because I know that we have an extra physical existence. And I think we all participate in that. But with that acknowledged, with that acknowledged, is the meditation helpful? Is the liturgy helpful?

Are all these rules and doctrines that we've set up within the historic faiths, within Eastern faiths, within Western faiths, within new religious movements? Do they matter? Do they matter? Now, if someone steps up as an individual and says to me, yes, they matter because I've been meditating for 30 years and I'm not violent anymore and so on. I want to hear from that person. I'm not trying to create a counter-orthodoxy.

I want to hear from that person. But I've been on this path for a long time now. I have very serious questions about many things that we take for granted, such as the benefits of meditation. I don't I don't know that those benefits are there. I don't know that they're there. I haven't verified that. We, you know, I listen and I've done it, you know, it's like,

I know I'm going to get the emails and the tweets like, hey, motherfucker, you know, have you meditated, you know, get your spirit on, you know. Yes, you know, people always assume that when you come to a different conclusion that they have, it's because you're not familiar with something. You know, it's like, well, you got to read this, well, you got to try that. And it's like, maybe I've tasted it, but, you know, I don't respond to that taste.

Man, it reminds me of when, first of all, I think any time you find, I've found myself pushing meditation, something is off in me. Like that something's gone south in my own practice. If I ever am pushing that on somebody else, I'm usually trying to fix them. And usually what I'm doing is a kind of passive aggressive admonishment of them as a person. I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm sort of like saying you suck, but I'm doing it in the most disgusting way.

Instead of just saying you suck. It's terrible. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just stipulating wildly, you know, because I dig. Yeah, man. That to me is the.

The. It is so it is such a form of violence, by which I mean like emotional violence against another person, you know, you need to read this pamphlet. You need to meditate. You need to get right with my version and definition of God. Over and over and over. And when you're and when you tell somebody, no, who's bringing you that trip, then you see who they really are, you know, when somebody offers you love

and you say, no, thank you, then you see who they are. And it ain't pretty. It ain't pretty. Well, I would counter that. I don't know that that's love, like that's not love. In quote marks, you know, it's like this, like going over, going to someone who you think isn't in the type of shape they should be in and like giving them a shake weight or something.

I mean, like, hey, I bought you this exercise equipment. It's lame. Fuck you, man. I don't like I'm happy the way I am. And I don't need you to come like trying to change me. So this is why I was the, you know, the Ramdas camp in general. Or what Ramdas says is if you really want to help the people around you, work on yourself, don't work on them.

Like, what are you going to do? Like, what's your plan? You're going to start with them and then you're going to like somehow by getting the people around you to meditate. Now you're going to be a better person. That's insanity. No one's going to look. No one's going to, and no one's going to do it.

I've never, as far as I'm aware, in my missionary phases, which I am embarrassed to say, I've had more than a few. And I've been on the phone more than a few times with friends when I've been a little drunk or stone, telling them some spiritual shit. And inside I'm angry at them, but I'm not saying I'm fucking mad at you. Or I wish you were, I'm telling them, man, you know, it's all spiritual bypass. You know, it's me trying to avoid a confrontation by inviting them to some practice, which I'm not even doing.

So this is always, but that being said, if I were going to make an argument for meditation, which by the way, I'm not, I think the best thing is if you don't want to meditate, don't meditate. You weren't going to like it. Don't do it. Right. Why, why would you want, don't do it. It's not a cure.

It's not as, there is no cure. And also if you've gotten in your head, you're going to get a benefit from meditation, then you're, it's going to be even worse for you. But personally, the, the practice of meditation personally, all you could say is anecdotally personally, when I am meditating there, I do, I think I, I feel a measurable increase in creativity and my ideas come to me more. And I feel like also if I'm sitting still, I'll notice more that I'm like where I'm at, you know, it's easy to trick yourself into thinking you're not

angry, you're not scared, you're not anxious, you're not, whatever it is, because you're busy, but somehow sitting still makes me realize like, oh fuck, I'm really scared or I'm really upset or I'm really sad right now. And I've been running into my busyness to try to avoid this like paint, painful feeling. And then also I've noticed if I'm meditating, which by the way, full disclosure, I haven't meditated in three months. And my meditation teacher has said things to me along the lines of Duncan,

you know, I'm teaching you meditation, right? Yes. So if you're not meditating, what does that say about me? I love him. He doesn't shove it on me. He doesn't force me to do it, you know, but it's, but I would say that personally there are, it does seem, there does seem to be a correlation between me meditating and other people around me suddenly seemingly,

suddenly becoming miraculously less irritating. You know what I mean? I dig that. I have not meditated in a long time either. I maintained a very, very steady meditation practice for many, many years. I have recently stopped for reasons that I have no great, um, Testament around. I, it was a preference. It was simply a preference.

And what I have been working with recently are very situational things. Like I feel that it's profoundly important for myself and I offer it to others. If it's useful, my exercise over the past, I would say a year has involved, um, getting away from cruel people. I think human cruelty is something that we're afraid as a culture to talk about. We're all diagnosable, you know, somebody has depression, somebody has anxiety, somebody has OCD, somebody has whatever you want to call it. And you can use language from psychopharmacology, the DSM, cognitive therapy,

Freudian stuff, whatever you like. We're all diagnosable. But human cruelty is a real problem. People get angry. They demonstrate hostility. They intimidate other people. They gaslight other people. They trash talk other people.

They deny other people's pain or trauma. And it occurred to me that sometimes we are under a tyranny of therapeutic and spiritual handed down wisdom that says we have to fix ourselves. We can't change other people. It's easier to wear slippers than to carpet the world. Forget the world and change yourself. I'm not denying that some of that thinking doesn't have applicability in given situations, but I think it's overused.

I think it's overused. And I think, yeah, certainly for myself, and I would extrapolate, I don't think my case is exceptional. I have found that switching venues, switching venues and getting out of relationships that cause agony is just the closest thing I've experienced to a revolutionary change in my life, revolutionary. And I can't be exceptional. So I've been really working with that.

Man, see, this is the double edged sword of any spiritual practices that it produces such an opportunity for what could only be defined as cowardice. And then it's not just cowardice, but you disguise it as like some form of like self-crucifixion. In other words, you imagine the shitty situation that you're in, you must bear it. And the reason you must bear it is because of some weird premise that you have that you've earned it karmically.

And therefore you're instead of doing the most obvious thing, which is to get the fuck out of it. Well, you're being abused. What are you doing? You're being crushed. Your soul is being crushed. Go, you've got to go. This is not a time for you to sit and burn incense and do prayers.

You're you're in a you're in a hellscape that is undeniable. And it doesn't matter what prayers you do. You're still in a shit situation. You've got to go. You've got to go. And you and yeah, you got to go. I think this is important for kids, too, because sometimes kids are in situations, young kids, adolescents, they're in situations where they're

being torn down, they're being picked apart. And they don't realize they don't realize, even from a young age, that they have the opportunity to completely get away from someone or something that's tormenting them. If they're in school, for example, and there's a bully, they may not physically be able to get away from that person. And that's another problem. It's a whole different set of circumstances.

But if they don't like the gang that they're hanging with in the neighborhood or the peer group or this or that or the other thing, you know, we possess more capacity than we know to just say no, turn our back and walk away. And I mean, do it clean, burn that bridge. Watch it burn beneath your feet so that you can never go back. There's power in that and it's positive. And I just don't want people to be around situations, especially casual situations that they feel are familiar or that they have to put up with maybe

a friend who's passive aggressive towards them. The individual doesn't have to put up with that. They can change and they can do it almost instantly. I agree, man. I mean, this is this is when I, I learned this thing too late in life. I wish I'd learned it soon, but it's this like madness of putting up with, you know, it's so many times you could find yourself around someone who, you know, maybe is like a type of artist that you really respect, but they're monstrous.

Or, you know, a person who like in some way or another, you admire, but your admiration of their creative output is somehow, uh, give it, giving them this like bizarre hall pass to be complete bastards to you. And it's, it's so, it's such a, I've done that. I've done that in my life and I've certainly, you know, working in entertainment. I've seen people who could only be described in this. Thank God it really is an anomalous event. Like in general, I've been thrilled to find that the archetype of the

shitty Hollywood person who's like a real monstrous ego bastard or whatever. It's generally that you don't find that. Usually you just get around people who you want to be best friends with. And you realize, oh my God, their energy is such that everyone who's around them wants to be their best friend, which explains their ascent into a very competitive industry, just cause that's how they are. Like they're so sweet and interesting and charismatic. That's your drawn to them.

But that being said, from time to time, you will run into people who have an orbit around them of some of the most miserable, drained people that you have ever seen in your life. In the archetype for it in fiction is the, um, uh, Rinfeld. You think of Rinfeld, this poor thing wants to be turned into a fucking vampire is never going to be turned in. It's like in prison, eating worms or whatever. He's like just a mess and he's been a slave to this, this vampire.

And there's some sick hope in the Rinfeld that at some point the vampire is going to give them the gift of immortality. So when it's when you run into this kind of entourage, which is a vampire slave entourage, you will encounter exactly one of the qualities of a cult, which I'm sure you're aware of, which is that people in a cult will start looking like the cult leader. That's one of the things that you'll see. That's watch out.

If you see someone who's like got a circle around them, whether it's a dad whose kids are dressed and look like him, or whether it's a freaking, you know, famous person and the people around them all look like him, run for the hills. You've got a bad situation. It's terrible. I've never really encountered that in my world, but that's really creepy. That's creepy. Oh yeah.

It's, I mean, it's, it's, it happens. And it's, it's one of the most bizarre things to see someone with an orbit of people who all look like them. Cause you're like, holy shit, your charisma was so powerful that the people around you who tolerated your shit were essentially forced through some manipulation to gradually turn into you. Cause your narcissism is so profound that you can only deal with being with yourself.

Scary. Look out, they'll get you. But you know, that happens in lower levels too. You know, just anytime you're around somebody, I loved your article on forgiveness, man. And one of the things you were talking about is friction and friendship. And like the, the importance of that friction, the importance of being with people who have, you have friction with, you know, the importance of

people who you spark off of, you want that. I don't want to agree with all my fucking friends. I want to profoundly disagree with my friends because that disagreement produces all kinds of creative moments. Yes. Yes. And it, and it's probably the case that without friction, we would be emotional and intellectual children.

Friction pushes us into situations that make us more formidable, more capable, more powerful. And I was riffing off of a statement by William Blake who said, opposition is true friendship. And ever since I've started grocking to that statement, it's helped me to see things in a different way and it can take a really long time to like, here's an example, and this is relates to the question of environment, what we were talking about just a few minutes ago.

I have a lake house in upstate New York. I live in New York City and I have a lake house in upstate New York and I owned it for about 15 years and I had a neighbor who was a rib prick. He used to make wisecracks all the time. And he was just inconsiderate and he was a real asshole. And like, I would receive a steady diet of wisecracks from this guy, never liked it. And I kept trying to be a good neighbor back to him. I kept trying to be positive.

I, I kept trying to do all the things that spiritual people are supposed to do. I would, I would pray. I would visualize. I would wish him well. I would recite affirmations. And I just hated the motherfucker and nothing made it better. A fence didn't make it better. My prayers didn't make it better.

You know, finally, I just realized that not only did I have to get away from him, but on those occasions where I'm around him, I don't talk to him. I ignore him. You know, I completely turn my back on him and that's fine. That's positive because we're just not part of the same pack and we're never going to be, but it took me that long to realize that you don't owe your courtesy, your spiritual practice, your understanding to somebody who is directing hostility towards you and you certainly don't have to sit around analyzing it or

getting into some morbid self-reflection about it. What you need to do is get away from it or just freeze out the other person. But if it weren't for that guy who is a pain in the ass and a bad neighbor, I wouldn't have learned that. I wouldn't have learned that. I don't want to go out and have a beer with him. But if I didn't go through that experience, I wouldn't have learned something that's improved my life and maybe will improve life of somebody else.

If they listen to it and say, hmm, that sounds like a good idea. So that's one very small example. But I think that if we didn't have friction in life, what would we be? I almost see that as the esoteric lesson behind the expulsion from the Garden of Paradise. If Adam and Eve remained in the Garden of Paradise, they would be kept poodles. You know, what would it amount to? And the snake who came and told them the truth, yes, we're going there.

Yes, we're going there. The snake who came and told them the truth about the situation and who said to Eve, what kind of cruel, horrible keeper is this who tells you that you can eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of self-awareness and who tells you you'll die if you eat from that tree. You won't die. You'll be more like him. So Eve eats from it.

Adam eats from it. Neither of them die. The snake told them the truth, but they're expelled from so-called paradise. But in being expelled from paradise, they become actual human beings. Otherwise, what story would there even be to tell? There would be no need for scripture. Everybody would just be sitting around kept. But how annoying they didn't make it to the second fucking tree.

You know, if the serpent was really cool, he would have been like, eat the second one now, hurry, because you're going to get kicked out. And then we'd all be fine. Dig this story is like, dig this. Somebody got really pissed off about me about this. But there's a line of reasoning with a mainstream Christian theology, not, you know, my like, you know, sort of like dark side reinterpretation of all this stuff. There's a mainline Christian theological argument that sees

the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil as being one and the same, as being one and the same. So that's sort of an interesting thing to deal with. And that's come out of mainstream scholars. Whoa. Yeah. In other words, they did. They ate all the bad fruit that there was.

Like that was the forbidden fruit was one. Well, the forbidden fruit was the fruit of life, was the fruit of life, was the fruit that made them into sentient beings, into capable beings and brought friction, you know, so you Eve gives birth initially to two sons, Kane and Abel. There's an active fratricide. We think, oh, you know, this is tragic. This is horrible. This is the degraded human condition.

Is it maybe friction is part of the human situation? And that's how it is. What do you know this? I love this concept of the kept dogs. Like, I love this idea that had they like not listened to the snake, suddenly we end up with this like, what exactly what? Yeah, that's I've never thought of that before. You end up with these like cute little like aquarium poodle people who are just

naming shit in this aquarium and this the whole thing is like really, really bizarre. And, you know, it does lend some credence to some of the Gnostic ideas that you hear, which is like, no, you are trapped in a kind of the same kind of jar. They put fireflies in like that was a some kind of weird God that caught these two beings and was like, just planning on eternally fucking with him for some reason. And, you know, also another way to look at it would be any way you look at it. This is what I wanted to bring up regarding your article. It leads right into a question I have for you.

We haven't spoken much about this incredible essay you wrote regarding forgiveness, which is in medium right now. I'll put the link at DuncanTrussell.com. But essentially the premise in please correct me if I'm interpreting it the wrong way. But to me, the premise basically what you seem to be saying is this concept of forgiveness being a kind of spiritual law that you should always forgive no matter what is madness. It's the result of that kind of thinking is how could that be good for anybody? It can only result, if it were even possible, which I'm not even sure it were, what does

that do? Some of my great moments of learning in my life have been when I've heard a friend and they don't forgive me. And I realized that I'm not going to be forgiven in this lifetime. I've fortunately only had that happen really once where I've spoken with a friend years and years ago, hoping there would be some like, yeah, it's OK, man. I forgive you. Hoping there would be some pardoning of what I'd done.

And he didn't. I really respect him for it, but it hurt. But but from that act, it taught me a lot about how important it is to really have an ethical moral code, you know, to really try as much as I can to not hurt people. It really I learned from that. And I'm not saying that had he been in that moment forgiving of me, I wouldn't have also learned it was just something about that type of teaching that he gave me. It was very, very powerful.

And he and I did this day are great friends. But which which also, you know, one of the things I want to talk about is you could still be friends with someone and not forgive them. That is true. You could still maintain a connection with a person and feel some like animosity towards some stupid shit they did, and that doesn't mean that you're not friends anymore. So yes, I really love love the essay that you're writing. But I wanted to chat with you about the concept of sentience and forgiveness.

In other words, in the Garden of Eden, here we have Jehovah, which is theoretically some omniscient omnipotent being, meaning that this being is fully aware of all probabilities, making the decision to put two semi sentient beings into this weird aquarium situation and present them with some kind of bizarre test, which they could only fail. If you really think about it, they could only. It does kind of produce a condition within which that being that put them there could only be described as malevolent, right?

Like that's that's that's my outlook. It's a force of absolute conformity, orthodoxy, enforcement, a demand for absolute fealty. And it strikes me that if it weren't for disobedience, first of all, there would be no scripture at all. There'd be no Beatitudes. There'd be no Sermon on the Mount. There'd be no Ten Commandments. There'd be no Psalms.

There'd be no Proverbs because there would be no problems to solve. What human friction would need to be fixed, addressed? What inventions would be necessary? There'd be no pathos and there would be no humanity. There would be no humanity. So it strikes me that the weight of conformity that was visited upon these not yet human beings was exactly the force of a kind of pre-birth, pre-aware, pre-sentient, not yet formed life that has been mislabeled paradise.

And that was actually pre-existence, without which the human being wouldn't. We wouldn't exist. We didn't exist until the snake. We didn't exist until the snake. That's my creator. Yeah. There you go. This is, you know, I this is a question I want to ask you.

I was hesitating to ask you this only because I it's an annoying question, but I would love for you to answer it because you're one of my friends who is a Satanist, I'm friends with a few Satanists and I love them. And I'm not. I don't identify as a Satanist. And we love you, Duncan. Thank you. Some of my dearest friends have been Satanists.

And, you know, I don't I don't. This is a really embarrassing thing to say. I don't get offended that much, please. But one thing that inevitably offends me is when people say that if you are a Satanist, therefore you must be hurting children. Satanists are abusing kids and I always get it really annoys me because like I'm friends with you. I'm friends with other Satanists.

And one thing I know about all of you is you don't it's you strongly are advocates for children and wouldn't hurt kids. So I wonder if you could address this particular critique of it's not only total fiction, but it's a fascinating polarity in a sense because it teaches us how we displace things that are going on in one quarter of society to another quarter of society that is usually seen as the polar opposite. So, dig, during the 1980s and 90s here in the United States, as well as in Britain, we had what is now called the Satanic Panic.

And you had all these innocent people being accused of these bizarre horrible ritual crimes. It was complete fiction. And it has been acknowledged as such by a consensus almost all across society. It ruined people's lives and it was a profoundly damaging, widespread fraud that was based on this false premise of satanic ritual abuse of kids. Now, what was going on during the 80s and 90s? What was going on?

You had a huge unreported or underreported sexual abuse of children going on within the Catholic Church. You had a huge un- or underreported abuse of children going on within the Boy Scouts of America, so much so that today the Boy Scouts of America has declared bankruptcy to shield itself from lawsuits by adult survivors of that abuse. So that today there are more than 20 Catholic parishes or Catholic organizations that had tutelage over children that have declared bankruptcy to protect themselves. Now, I'm not pointing a finger exclusively at the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church because

there's corruption throughout our society. It's not any one group or it's not any one sector. But the manner in which we digest corruption that we can't deal with is to force it off to its polar opposite. So hence, during those years in which these scandals were unfolding but hadn't quite yet broken the image of the robed, ritualistically abusive satanist took shape in the mind of certain therapists, certain law enforcement folks, certain not very discriminating reporters. Always look at the opposite end of the polarity.

Always look at the opposite end of the polarity. One of the things I write in my piece on forgiveness that seems to have created both misunderstanding and pissed off certain numbers of people and that I stand by entirely is I am not a Christian, but I am a better Christian in conduct than most of my detractors. And it's that simple. It's that simple because I'm not looking to throw rocks at people. I'm looking to try to understand things. I'm looking to be left alone to embark on my own search for truth and I will only guarantee

my neighbor that I will leave him alone too to do that. And as I see it, the life I lead is a lot less violent than the life of most people who claim to be speaking on behalf of something that they think is somehow scripturally anointed. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that is, I think that to me, this is where I get really confused about Satanism, which is that, and I've said this to other Satanist friends of mine, I've said to them, you seem more like a Christian to me than a Satanist.

It's crazy, right? Yeah, there's like a, there's a really strict ethical code that I respect a lot and there's a really, there's an adherence to that that is very powerful and good. And that has within it this quality of sweetness and has within it a quality of the liberator, which is this idea of like, any place where you find yourself trapped in some archaic, shitty, antiquated, abusive dogma, a Satanist is trying to pull you, if anything will try to get you out of that, you know, using these symbols that seem to be associated with Satanism, you know, but think of to me, I just think of all those people who for them Christianity

was completely eternally, probably rightfully obliterated, because they were forced to, you know, suck a priest dick, like suddenly, you know, here is this scripture that for me has within it a lot of powerful, beautiful, magical qualities and what could be more evil than a being convincing a thing that is so young, there's no way it has the ability to discern that it's being tricked into thinking that number one, it's a representative of that teaching and number two, after convincing the being, it's a representative of that teaching to then sexually abuse that being producing all the effects of sexual abuse, which is generally a form of rotten, pathological, terrifying, horrific subservience, you know what I mean to

the point where you're what you're looking at is like, if you really want to talk about evil, it's not a snake telling to proto hominids that maybe they should try out sentience instead of being beaten down by some patriarchal, malevolent, eternal, fucking aquarium keeping monster, it's somebody wearing an embarrassing outfit, making a kid give them a blowjob in the name of scripture. To me, what's more evil than that? I mean, that's like nuclear bomb level. Somebody else of doing that, accusing the Wiccan who's a librarian of doing that, accusing the Freemason who coaches Little League of doing that, and that person is innocent. So you're creating even a whole other set of victims, not only the poor, helpless being who you've just

abused, but by association, the Wiccan librarian, the New Age high school teacher, the person who's not doing anything to anybody suddenly finds him or herself under this kind of cruel scrutiny. Now, I would also say that with regard to Satanism, of course, there's a broad spectrum of outlooks and points of view. Some people would describe themselves as ardent atheists, for example, who only use satanic symbols as a kind of cultural rejection of religion. That's not me. I do take a spiritual view of life. I do think in terms of deity, I do think our ancient ancestors possessed wisdom when they identified energies within nature. They personified these energies. They sought relationships with these energies. I believe in that. I practice that.

And I ultimately view Satanism within the Western rubric as a force of radical nonconformity, usurpation, emancipation, a absolute rebelliousness and anti-heroics that pushes back against whatever the dominant power structure is, not as an end to itself, but to ensure that we don't wind up back in that aquarium, which is supposed to be paradise, but which is actually a jail. Oh, my God, that's brilliant. Oh, that's the most, again, this is where my brain gets so scrambled, because it's like, again, what you're talking about to me is Christian. It's Christianity, because maybe that's how satanic I am, is I'm so confused when I hear it. I'm like, God, that's how I understand Jesus to be. That's how I understand love and liberation to be,

because to me, what is more fucked up that you can do to a person than to convince them they're in heaven when they're in hell? What is that's the most diabolic thing I could imagine if we're considering diabolically an oppressive force? And psychologically, isn't that what gaslighters do to people? When you deny somebody's pain, when you tell them you're too sensitive, it's all in your mind. Isn't that a reenactment of exactly what you're describing? Oh, my God, you're right. It's so crazy. And I think this territory we're in right now, it really is the forbidden landscape that people just try to keep their minds from going to. And where it gets even more obscene is that people are encouraged to not go here.

They're encouraged. Don't question it. Don't think about it. And there's many levels of that encouragement. One of the levels is, well, you're taking it too literally. It's not meant to be taken literally. But then another level of it is anything that's trying to rationalize the idea that it makes sense to take, essentially, brand new beings and force them into a mode of being that involves either subservience or revolution. It's a sick binary. It really is. It sounds fetishistic. It's abusive. I'm sorry for my Christian friends out there. You know, I do love Jesus. I really do. But there's something incredibly abusive about the Garden of Eden story. It's abuse. Because what? You're a superintelligence. You're an ancient, never-ending superintelligence.

You give these poor things some pathetic shit test that they're clearly... Let me tell you, my 16-month-old, tell them not to do something and wait three minutes. That's what's beautiful about human nature. That's what's beautiful about human nature. Tell them, you know, don't touch such and such. Leave that alone. The television click. Only Daddy can touch the television clicker. Well, the television clicker gets thrown out the window in five minutes because what's so valuable about it? And who's Daddy to say that I can't touch the television clicker? It's human nature. And it's funny. With respect to this whole forgiveness question, we are told by the High Church of Therapeutic Spirituality that, you know, you don't forgive

for another person. You forgive for yourself. You can't get on in life without forgiveness. You know, I've heard all these ideas and my issue is not telling somebody that's not legitimate. My issue is, let's verify it. Let's verify it. We can verify it in our own lives, but just don't hand down to another person what they're supposed to believe. I worked with forgiveness for about seven years. About seven years ago, I had a situation where someone did something that I felt was a real betrayal. And I needed, so I thought at the time, to forgive this person. And I really, really worked with it. And I'm very aware that forgiveness is considered to be at the heart of Christianity. Forgiveness to a somewhat lesser degree, but nonetheless is still deep

seated within Judaism. Forgiveness is at the heart of most of our contemporary spiritualities, like Course in Miracles, the Twelve Steps. Forgiveness is considered the door of entry to realizing higher truths. So like everybody else within, on the spiritual path, I took that as a truism. I took that as an absolute. I took that as a starting point. And after a period of about seven years, I realized I am being torn in two by this teaching. I am being asked to do something that feels profoundly unnatural to me. And at least from my perspective, abiding is more important than forgiving. There's going to be friction. And that friction is going to expose things that make me feel powerless and weak and threatened. It is more positive for me to

address those feelings of powerlessness and weakness and threat, which by the way may not be illusions, which may be real. It's a tough world. And it may be very healthy and positive for me to look at those things and say, shit, this is really an issue. This needs to be dealt with in the same way that if you want to get rid of malaria, you drain a swamp. That's not an illusion. That's just a fact of life. So we're taught that these things are illusions. We're taught that everything outside of love, whatever that is, is an illusion. And I began to question the truth of that. And I began to question all the truisms that I encountered about forgiveness. And I came to feel that it is not the royal road to higher truth. It can be a crippling diversion and can

make a person feel very divided within. Okay, but let me ask you this. Don't you think you can simultaneously love someone and not forgive them? I think you can simultaneously love someone and hate someone. I think that we experienced a lot of that with our parents, for example. Many of us love and hate our parents. We feel attached to them for all the emotional reasons that I think we all understand. We all have attachments, but we also sometimes feel painfully betrayed. So there are people who love and hate their spouses, love and hate their parents. I do think it's a natural part of life. But being told that one has to forgive the object of hate, even if you also harbor love, that's a dictate that needs to be examined. That may be positive for

some individuals. It was not positive for me. It is a atrocious thing to invite someone to forgiveness when they're not ready. And I know how I know that because I've done that to people I wanted to forgive me. I don't know if you've ever been in the situation where people aren't forgiving you on your timeline, but I certainly have. I have. And I have to honor them because if they feel I've betrayed them, if they feel I've hurt them, they are a mature being and they are entitled to hold me to a reckoning. And I have been held to a reckoning. And again, I think this notion that you have to do something, you have to pass go and pass and go entails forgiveness or pass and go entails non-attachment, whatever that is, pass and go entails non-identification,

pass and go entails focusing more on the inner before you can know truth. Those are things that require verification. Those are reasons why we had to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because we were being asked to live without verification. And the way that this gets fed back to us by the spiritual culture is to verify and then come back when we verified exactly what we've been told. If you're told to verify something and you go back to whomever your so-called teacher is and you have a different point of view, that person is going to send you away until you come back with the right point of view. If you believe in verification, then the mature individual has to be left to his own devices.

So I worked with forgiveness for seven years and I came to feel that it is not something that I view as a blanket good or a blanket virtue. In fact, sometimes quite the opposite. I love it. You know, why don't we just wrap up? If you don't mind, I'm going to read from your essay. This is brilliant. I love this so much. My reason in the end is simple. I believe that the moral, how do you say that? Swation? Swasion. Swasion.

Swasion, the moral Swasion to forgive often places the individual in an unnatural position and produces inner division that gets diverted into other often hostile or self-negating behaviors. That does not mean that forgiveness is unwarranted in given situations, nor that it is not yield wounds. It means only that I reject forgiveness as a blanket rule, spiritual imperative or ethical necessity. That's so liberating. I think so many people are going to benefit from that just because God, you know, I just, all of us are just sick of feeling guilty because we haven't forgiven somebody who's hurt us. And so on top of someone hurting us, we are compounding that pain by beating ourselves up for the fact that we haven't achieved some

miraculous state of letting go of that anger in the timeline that some of these people are recommending that we do. I think what you wrote is like actually a very sweet, very Christian thing. I think it's a beautiful thing, not that you're a Christian. You're definitely a Satanist, but it's a very sweet thing. We have to take it easy on ourselves. Yeah. And I think we also have to reject being handed down definitions about what is and isn't real to us. You know, I think too many of us have grown up being told, for example, you're too sensitive. What does that even mean? You know, in my world, being too sensitive is good, is being positive. Every artist, every inventor, everybody who ever led a revolution was too sensitive.

So I don't see that as something that needs to be fixed. And I think we have permitted ourselves to be persuaded that things in us need fixing that maybe don't need fixing. Maybe what we need is to be in a different neighborhood. And I just want people to feel that that full range of options is open to them. Mitch, thank you so much for this time. I love chatting with you. I cannot wait for this to end. I feel like we are on the precipice of becoming friends that actually hang out. And then this fucking pandemic. Now we can't leave our houses. So it goes. Well, hopefully this will end soon and we'll finally be able to get a beer and out here in New York or wherever we cross paths. Thank you, Mitch. Where can people find you?

Oh, they can go to my website, Mitch Horowitz.com. They can find me on Twitter at my name. They can find me on Instagram at Mitch Horowitz 23. And I've got a whole bunch of stuff up at Medium recently, including this article and and others that also explore some of these issues. Thank you, friend. All the links are going to be at DuncanTrustle.com. Thank you so much, Mitch. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening, everybody. That was Mitch Horowitz. You can find Mitch by going to DuncanTrustle.com or Google him. Big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. And a big thanks to you for listening. I hope you all are safe, happy, healthy with big full bellies and having massive orgasms on a daily basis. I will

see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. And we're never short on options at JCP.com. All dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney.