DLM # 159 The Sovereign Psyche (Or Why Texting Sucks)

Here is a video that clearly shows why we are dying, psychologically. Why our souls are dying even as we make sure to take down all other living beings with us. If I waggle my finger in everyone’s face this week, it’s because our babyish ways are irresponsible, we need to grow up, stat.

For this week’s music, I’ve decided to start offering musical assignments. Please download Beethoven’s final symphony onto your phone, then go out into the woods with headphones, or or the desert, or the river, somewhere away from humans and the digital world. While you listen to the symphony, collect leaves, rocks, twigs, whatever winks at you, and then build a mandala on the ground. Make a square, then put a circle in the middle of it. Then embellish and decorate it in any way you like. Say a prayer for the soul of the world, the anima mundi. This process will take a bit over an hour. Then make a pact that you will do something beautiful and non-digital like this every week come hell or high water. Don’t take a picture of your mandala. Don’t upload it to social media or text it to anyone. Let it be a secret ritual of between you and the cosmos, mixed together in silent and loving solitude.

DLM # 158 Asleep At The Wheel 🌀

So excited to share this week’s sermon and music with you all. After a very long and cold winter, the weather is finally turning warm around here and it’s a glorious Sunday morning. No matter what is happening in your world, or in the world in general, there can be some joy in sitting in the sun and breathing deeply.

DLM # 155 Adventures on the Wheel of Samsara ☸️

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, and Jai Ma!! Victory to the Mother!

And happy four years of attempting to spread wisdom and light into the world!

After listening to the sermon, you may object that it’s important to be “in the world” to help alleviate suffering. I agree, of course, we must all do what we can. But what I am suggesting is that there is something even more important than that: training yourself and your mind to such a degree that you are no longer unconsciously contributing to the cyclical regeneration of suffering in the first place. If with one hand we clean, and with the other, we are creating a mess, then the cycle just goes on ad infinitum. At some point, we must stop creating the mess in the first place and we can only achieve this with a highly trained and refined mind.

DLM # 152 Moonday Sermons

I like the word thalassic. For music this week, look up Tom Moulton’s remixes of the Philadelphia Classics and listen to all of them, then slowly, slowly, get really into Tom Moulton.

DLM # 151 Solar Cycles of Death & Rebirth 🌀🔥

It takes a lot of heart, man. That’s all I can say.

DLM # 150 Mindfullness or Singlemindedness?

It’s an important question we don’t ask ourselves enough. Should we be full of mind or should we be focused?

The external world is unreliable, it will not avail us, especially when we are using an untrained monkey mind to interact with it. Training is the only answer, the only pathway to liberation which begins within, inside our own minds, the scariest and most dogmatic place of all!

DLM # 148 Slowness and Consciousness

I hope you enjoy today’s sermon. In honor of its theme, we’re listening to Manuel Göttsching’s E2E4—an hour-long song that gives new meaning to slowing down.

DLM # 142 Something's Fishy 🐬

Intuitively sensing that mind is trapped in matter, I wrote a sermon and then started reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s analysis of the Bhagavad Gita, where just now I came away with the astonishing statement: “all matter is thought.” And thought is an elemental aspect of of mind. It’s exciting to be here with you and share knowledge through words, but I will tell you, I’m starting to find that only deep meditation produces real knowledge. Everything else is just theoretical or conceptual knowledge which is often mistaken and deluded.

DLM # 131 The Affirmative Hero 👑

As always, keen discernment is a golden key that can unlock many doors.

DLM # 130 Hail The Victorious Dead 🍺🦋

Three supplementary items here: a photo of where I was sitting when I wrote today’s sermon, a photo of the Bohemian cemetery mentioned, and a video by Sadhguru explaining the way the mind is a reality-creation-factory we must train so we can consciously and consistently manifest peace, joy, and love.

Vyšehrad Cemetery

Nice place to sit and write!

DLM # 129 A Coronation Event 👑

A halo of light encircling a radiant object.

DLM # 120 Growing Up Strong Like A tree

We’re often blown off course when we see the success and wealth of others and start to feel bad about ourselves. But for those seeking wisdom, the slow maturation process of a tree is a better image to emulate.

DLM # 118 Tom Brady, Archetype of Success

A little ditty on the kinds of psychological parameters that give rise to feelings of fulfillment and success in life. The word “success” has been hijacked by the greedy capitalist imagination but in my view, true success is about self-mastery.

****Also, the “Let’s f**cking go” sign-off on today’s sermon is referencing Tom Brady’s oft-repeated call to action.

A recycled music mix from the early days of my mixes, apologies, I’m juggling a lot right now but will have a new mix next week.

DLM # 117 Artemis, Apollo, and the Dance of Oracular Healing

The 2021 Fates & Graces Mythologium was held this weekend and I presented a new paper about the archetypal significance of the pair being twins, among other things.

Ever since Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy, people have been laying their grievances about the patriarchy and its over-emphasis on rational thought at Apollo’s feet. But to me, Apollo cannot be separated from the imaginal attributes surrounding his myth. In my view, it is really Aristotle we should be complaining about.

Anyway, I turned my conference presentation into a Youtube video which is now moonlighting as this week’s sermon. The work is certainly preachy at times so I think it qualifies as a religious sermon.

This week’s music mix is also recycled because I have been listening to it nonstop since last week. I realized that I’ve had Artemis and Apollo on the brain for a while now and last week’s mix is really about the two of them. See if you can identify which songs invoke Artemis and which Apollo. There’s an epic one that’s really about both of them.