is reality optional?

There is a quietly subversive move hiding in plain sight here. This essay by Richard Beard (https://aeon.co/essays/sure-ai-can-do-writing-but-memoir-not-so-much) looks like it’s arguing against AI, but the more interesting thing is that it is actual... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/baa043bc96/

The person who's been to twenty workshops and read a hundred books but whose life hasn't materially shifted isn't unlucky in their choice of teachers or methods. They're using workshops and books as a way to avoid the central demand: you are the variable you haven't changed.

Every "I can't because" statement is a narrative choice presenting itself as a fact.

consciousness is causative

You are always imagining. You are always telling yourself stories about who you are and how reality works. Those imaginal acts, those narratives, create corresponding experiences.

Every person stuck in a pattern they hate has had moments of clarity where they saw exactly what they were doing and why. They had the insight. They saw the mechanism. Then they went back to the familiar pattern because the alternative required becoming someone they weren't ready to become.

Find the poetry in the machine. I love this line. It’s the same pattern that’s played out with every tool that threatened to “replace” human creativity. Photography was going to kill painting. Synthesizers were going to kill “real” music. D... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/da768dc44d/

If consciousness is causative, if imagination creates experience, then the life you're living right now is a printout of the code you've been running. Mostly unconsciously. Mostly inherited from family, culture, and random emotional reactions you never examined.

Nobody’s coming to save you. Not a system. Not a teacher. Not a philosophy. So now what?

The first uncomfortable truth: meaning isn't inherent, it's created. And if you won't create it, you'll either adopt someone else's meanings or slide into nihilistic despair.

no god, no guru, no system is going to transform you. your consciousness is sovereign.

🎙️ Just published a new episode of Soulcruzer: Self-Observation Without Judgment: The Lost Practice That Changes Everything. Have a listen:

The practice that comes before all techniques is self-observation without judgement. This one change changes everything...

The Spreader Part II This is part II of The Spreader, a psychological horror/speculative fiction story I started at the tail end of last year.  If you haven't read part one, here's the link. I decided to use an interactive format for Part II.    Spreader Part 2 - Interactive E-Book Spreader Part 2…

The Self doesn't fit in mirrors. It's too large, too multidimensional, too alive.

Between every event and your experience of it lies a gap. In that gap, you have a choice. Which story will you tell? www.soulcruzer.com/self-author...

Between every event and your experience of it lies a gap. In that gap, you have a choice. Which story will you tell?

What if the story you tell yourself about what happened is more consequential than what happened?

The Who - I'm Free youtu.be/Ux1vBolJf5Q?... and freedom tastes of reality...

delight is what happens when you start seeing your own life as an unfolding allegory rather than a checklist.

If your world feels stuck, thin, or adversarial, the most effective intervention is rarely more effort or better tactics. It’s a shift in awareness. Change the state, and the map redraws itself. Quietly. Relentlessly. Every time you look again.

Delight...

Attention shapes experience by determining what elements of reality become vivid and meaningful while others fade into background noise. Where you direct your focus literally constructs your lived reality, not just your memory of it but the actual text... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/d3bd929f0c/

Awareness doesn’t just color perception. It governs behavior. What you notice shapes how you respond. How you respond shapes what you reinforce. What you reinforce becomes the environment you live inside. Over time, this creates a feedback loop so tight it starts to look like fate.

The world doesn’t actually change that much, but the way it feels changes constantly. You've probably noticed it too:

Some people believe anxiety fuels their productivity; it doesn't. Instead, it quietly drains away your energy. I think it's time to call it out for what it is: www.soulcruzer.com/anxiety-has...

Some people believe anxiety fuels their productivity; it doesn't. Instead, it quietly drains away your energy. I think it's time to call it out for what it is:

Every system we adopt, whether magical, political, spiritual, or philosophical, is essentially a technology of consciousness. It’s a tool for organizing reality, for making meaning. We are meaning-making machines, trying to create coherence out of the chaos we navigate daily.

This started as a response to Joan Westenberg’s piece on blogging, but it turned into something more personal. It’s about why blogs still matter to me, not as content, but as a place to think, change, and actually become someone over time.

🎙️ Just published a new episode of Soulcruzer: The Printing Press Made Polymaths. AI Is Making Something Stranger.. Have a listen:

Epictetus expressed this: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions they form concerning things.”

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." — W.M. Lewis

The Printing Press Made Polymaths. AI Makes Something Stranger. The printing press gave us access to knowledge. AI gives us access to alien intelligence. We’re still in the “faster horse” phase – using AI to do what we already do, but quicker... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/6747a79137/

Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses—especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else. — Leonardo da Vinci

Om Malik (https://om.co/2026/01/16/our-algorithmic-grey-beige-world/) started my morning with a post (almost a rant) about the forced conformity of creativity on the Internet and how algorithms are forcing creators into a grey-beige world: > “What u... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/4c8da30f20/

Experimenting with the audiobook format on Youtube. "Two fishes swim in your inner sea... but look closer: they cast only one shadow." If you’re a fan of ancient symbols, or poetic philosophy, come sit by the fire and listen with me.

Your mind is not the boss. Your will to live is.

So this animal personality meme is starting to make the rounds… I asked ChatGPT this: Considering everything that you know about me, create an image of what animal I would be. Explain your reasoning. This is what it came up with: And here’s the ... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/e353129908/

I’ve been thinking out loud about a book that’s been quietly messing with my head: A Philosophy of As If. It’s about “useful fictions” and how the stories we live by don’t have to be true to shape how we think, feel, and act.

🎙️ Just published a new episode of Soulcruzer: A Philosophy of As If: Useful Fictions and the Stories We Live By. Have a listen:

Life throws problems at us that can't always be solved directly. When a straight solution doesn't work, thinking takes detours. It creates indirect ways of understanding and acting. These detours might be messy, imperfect, or logically strange, but they still help us reach our goal.

"What's one story about yourself that you'd rewrite if you could edit the code?"

Most people don’t fail because their system is broken. They fail because they abandon working systems right before they start producing results. We mistake the quiet period of germination for evidence of failure. Seeds underground look identical to s... https://www.soulcruzer.com/notes/ae012468b7/

a lesson i learned this morning was not to confuse vulnerability with failure. sometimes the pressure you're feeling is the tension between intention and emergence. the ego gets nervous when nothing visible seems to be happening.

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly." — Franz Kafka

longing...that restless feeling that never quite seems to go away...i used to think you needed to do the inner work to make it go away, but now i've come to understand it's not a problem to be fixed...it's something to embrace. #podcast

🎙️ Just published a new episode of Soulcruzer: The Nature of Longing: Why Restlessness Isn't a Problem to Solve. Have a listen: