Summary
We’ve all been there: mistaking a gut feeling for divine instruction, only to realize later it was ego in a fancy robe. Spiritual discernment is tricky terrain, especially when you’re flying solo. In a world where everyone’s their own oracle and algorithms echo our biases back at us, the real danger isn’t being wrong.
It’s being unchallenged.
This post dives into how ego distortion hijacks intuition, how trauma scripts write our futures unless interrupted, and why true clarity (like polished stones) only comes from enduring friction with others who keep us honest. There’s a better way, and Steve Jobs, of all people, fucken nailed it.
Drinking your own bathwater
The problem with following your own spiritual discernment and counsel is that people tend to drink their own bathwater due to ego distortion.
And by that I mean that people would rather be “right” than happy, and they often deliver their own self-fulfilling prophecy, again: due to ego distortion.
They “receive a message,” and they use it to inform a “prediction,” and then they relax into deeply-embedded patterns that tend to repeat the same toxic bullshit over and over.
This is why “deeply spiritual people” tend to repeat the same toxic and self-defeating patterns over and over, leading me to ask: are you manifesting from fear or from faith?
From Fear or Faith?
The kids’ mom used to say “I always knew I would end up divorced,” but the surreal quality of these conversations is that we were still married at the time, and I would ask “are you sure you’re not just coaching yourself into repeating your mom‘s story? Because I’m literally still here, and for some reason you are unable to see that part.“
Her dad left when she was four, and a generation later (and when our twins were four) she entered into a self-created delusion, and would cry while saying “I can’t believe I’ve lost the love of my life.”
I was standing right there, and was like: what the fuck
As a sense-making framework, she and her mother had concocted a false narrative about the reasons for her father‘s departure, and it was surreal to watch her mom swoop in to make sure that same story applied to me, because apparently some patterns need to repeat, or the whole foundation comes tumbling down.
History has a nasty tendency of repeating itself, unnecessarily.
The Perils of Meditation
I’m a huge fan of meditation, which for me is nothing more complicated than remaining present and mindful, tracing the source and origin of every thought and emotion, which affords a sustained state of clarity.
But if I begin to think that my POV is sufficient for sussing out reality, my ego can distort the message to suit its self-centered purposes.
Again: are you creating your future from fear or from faith?
Did the kids’ mom properly discern a future? Or did she allow fear to manifest itself?
We’ll never know, but I do know that she (like many) would rather be “right” (in her belief that her predictions are 100% accurate) than happy, and that’s why she will not allow anybody to offer a perspective that challenges her conclusions.
Providing feedback was assessed as being unsupportive, and she (like many) curated an airtight circle of “supporters,” but none were are able to look at her and say “girl, you are repeating a source trauma, and that’s why your tarot pulls keep coming up with the same guidance.“
For that reason and others, these past ten years I have curated a practice that I call “holonic discernment,” which makes explicit reference to holonic philosophy.
Holonic Discernment
Holonic philosophy suggests that the universe’s great complexity is observable at the smallest scale, particularly within “stable intermediary forms“ which can manifest with as few as two or three people.
FWIW: I find that 3 to 5 is ideal, and you hit diminishing returns at seven.
For over ten years I’ve been fiddling with this design for holonic discernment, and the practice has taken different forms, early on described as “alchemy,” and then it became 214, which eventually became the name of my company.
The Rock Tumbler
Returning to this fantastic and applicable video from Steve Jobs.
The holon is something like a rock tumbler, where ideas are tossed into the holonic circle, and each person participates in evolving the guidance to mitigate ego distortion.
Ego distortion occurs when one member of the circle allows their POV to dominate, thus magnifying the distortion’s destructive effects.
Holonic discernment can be done conversationally, but also you can use a chat interface, which serves as a form of tapestry, calibrated to date time stamps.
Here’s how it works:
I’ll share: “here’s the situation, and this is my take; am I assessing it correctly?“
Holding a mirror of truth and ruthless honesty, the other members will provide complementary feedback, but this practice only works if a person is humble, grounded and honest with themselves, which is hard to accomplish.
The Catholics use the word “Discernment” in a similar manner, but “discernment” can be a real problem is in the love and light community, where each person becomes their own level 6000 Buddha.
All things being equal, some of the most dishonest and toxic people I’ve encountered consider their spiritual practice superior to organized religion, and I think it’s ultimately due to ego distortion.
Because they think of themselves as superior to “organized religion,” (which they judge as “bad”), they are already operating within a distorted sense of self-importance, which tends to manifest as rationalized malfeasance and dishonesty vis a vis their perceived sense of what’s righteous and what’s evil.
I am a deeply spiritual person, but I’ve noticed that when a person entertains the belief that they have received guidance from spirit, that grandiose mindset tends to blow their ego up, when actually a person should get real humble and grounded, double and even triple-checking to make sure they are right (and correct).
Unfortunately, the “love and light” community is rich with those who have ordained themselves an oracle of unique importance, and this plays into why those circles are frequently so toxic and unhealthy.
Irony: in my business dealings the most dishonest people have been who describe themselves as spiritual, sober, and community-oriented. Again: this is likely a byproduct of ego distortion.
Perils of the LLM Spotlight Effect
All of this makes me think about the distortion potential of using ChatGPT and other LLM‘s as a sounding board for spiritual guidance, be at real or perceived.
If social media has distorted the spotlight effect, imagine what LLM’s are doing to people with overcompensating ego teetering on a foundation of shallow roots.
The spotlight effect is the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is noticed by others is uncommon. The reason for the spotlight effect is the innate tendency to forget that although one is the center of one's own world, one is not the center of everyone else's.
In the video attached to this post, Steve Jobs talks about the rock tumbler as a metaphor for taking innovations and evolving them by staying grounded and sticking with it.
He correctly notes that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that a person has to stay in the trenches to make the idea become real. I’ve found it extremely difficult to keep entrepreneurs in their chairs; they tend to run towards launching foundations and reality TV shows instead of doing the actual work.
A person has to stay in the trenches, they have to bruise their knees and their elbows by allowing their good idea to get beaten up so we can become real.
And so it is with the ideas themselves, particularly if a person believes that the ideas are “guided from spirit.”
