The Liminalist # 64: A Symbiotic Relationship to Vampires (with Aaron Ciderbeard)

Aaron1

Two-part conversation with longtime listener Aaron Ciderbeard, on missing connections for the podcast, infant abandonment patterns,  Gordon White and the Chris Knowles altercation, Neil Kramer’s changing persona, platforming people and self-packaging, the position of not-knowing, how to be kindly critical, Jeffrey Kripal, the dichotomy between amateur and professional, liminalism, a space for uncertainty, the value of conversations, landscape architecture in a small town, the effects of architecture on human consciousness, nomad living, small town life, the question of community, a perennial alienation, an anti-community identity, the questionable reasons for socializing, liminal retail work, attending to the practical, tuning into the body’s signals, visceral intuition, synesthesia & affect, the psychedelic experience, the subtlest sensation, infolding & outfolding consciousness, the other side of the skin, when the container falls away, dying into a sensation, an infinite spectrum of experiences, perception of linear time, the body as anchor, the Lord of time, why Saturn rules depression, every line has an ending, the futility of routine, Alan Watts’ conceit, Jasun’s psychedelic nightmare, when the mind gets introduced to eternity, where religions emerge from, C. S. Lewis’ conception of Hell, the closed system of negative identity, letting the demons devour you, a symbiotic relationship with vampires, astral ecology, cultivating a positive psychic environment.

Songs: “El Mariachi” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “You Is Dead” by Ivan Julian; “Oh Kiss No,” by My Bubba Mi; “Smack Dab in the Middle” by Nobody’s Bizness.

30 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 64: A Symbiotic Relationship to Vampires (with Aaron Ciderbeard)”

  1. Good talk.
    I want to mention something on the idea of the body’s knowing, or feeling (the lady’s feet hurting when looking at a disagreeable pair of shoes). A friend and I were just talking about this. Why can we usually feel when something is wrong even if we don’t know what the right thing is?
    I think a good analogy is of a musical instrument that is out of tune. Most people can tell the difference between an instrument in or out of tune, whether or not they know how to play it, or tune it.
    It seems that vibration patterns in our “body” and vibrations in “the world around” come together forming an interference of sorts that produces a pattern that feels good or a pattern that feels bad. Maybe a better way would be to say a pattern that makes sense or one that does not, in regards to our own vibration patterns (whatever the hell that means 😉 )
    Then the body’s worldly memories perhaps are some sort of vibration or pattern recognition analogous to a chemical matching a brain receptor…maybe

    Thanks again!
    Travis

    youtube video demonstrating pattern with sound vibrations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yaqUI4b974

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  2. Yep; moving from the innate ability to feel when we are getting it wrong to ceasing to suppress that feeling due to its unpleasantness and slowly moving away from whatever causes it, until we begin to feel the infinitely subtler feeling of rightness and follow that; till the day it has us, body & soul.

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    • Hmm…. I think it relates to something very wise you touched on Jasun. Which was how we find things to distract us and fill the space inside us so that an answer we are unready for wont fill it. In a similar fashion its more about leaving a space open for that subtle feeling of rightness to coalesce like dew on a leaf in the morning. Rather than completing an action which would give us that feeling of rightness. So by calming and clearing our being, aka sitting with the felt presence of immediate experience we might allow space for this state to come into being. I think this is important because this methodology can be applied to creative endeavors, self refinement, and the processing of difficult traumas and tragedies.

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    • “It”?…..”us”?….. Not sure what is ment when I hear those words in that context. Is “us” maybe a version of gods children. Is “it” the kingdom of heaven? That sounds as if there is something to get and someone to get it.

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      • I wasn’t trying to be cryptic. I was trying to touch on how myself and other people will often fill our lives, time, mind, with other activities like drugs, movies, games, tv, working out, shopping, podcasts, hobbies etc. This pattern of behavior seems to be common when a person is avoiding sitting with a challenging feeling or idea. Would be cooler if i was using cryptic key words for a select audience about a secret key to the kingdom of heaven. 😉

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        • Aaron, my comment was for Jasun. Sometimes I get the feeling that he is still trying to get somewhere in life 🙂 Which is fine of course. Just as valid as anything else I suppose. These sweeping accusations come only from a gradual erosion of my assiduity that there’s in fact anywhere need going, or anything need doing. I would even posit that a lot of our problems, if not all, stem directly from us going somewheres and doing somethings….The kingdom of heaven is up in ya :0

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      • How can you tell how large it is? I know he’s on a lot of pop culture shows like politically incorrect so one would assume its large.

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        • The size of the auditorium in the video and the full-feeling of it, the Ted-Talkiness of it. That & the number of followers on Twitter.

          Of course it’s the first thing my ego checks for: the size of the platform.

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          • yeah. Im kind of hot and cold on him. The show I linked is a pretty fun romp. I was not familiar with the idea of a psychological zombie ( a person or thing going through all the correct motions to appear conscious, yet not conscious). I thought you might like this, if you’re not already familiar, in contrast with Tulpas. Consciousness without a physical form.

          • I guess I’ve always been able to get information and ideas through someone without getting hung up on the person themselves.
            For instance, I was not even aware that he was so popular, hadn’t even crossed my mind, until y’all pointed it out. I’d say who gives a rats foot.
            To me the concepts and ideas is what is the important part. Whether it’s bullshit or not. If the presenter is a stand up person, all the better. If not. I take the nuggets and run.

  3. Here is a post podcast exchange between myself and Jasun which we felt would be relevant.

    Hey Jasun,

    It was a pleasure talking to you. It would be great to have a hundred hours to drill down into all the different things we touched on. I am still not convinced on psychedelics being more harm than good. Most of my many many experiences with them were simply large periods of almost animal like presence in the present moment. Or loving sharing of silly experiences with friends. I am not sure where many of yours took place but 95% of mine were alone, during the day, in the wilderness.

    I do share your experience of viewing my life after (school and work) as being wastes of time, and a difficulty to be fully present in those things. However my craving wasn’t for grand cosmic adventures or Christ like salvation, it was simply to live a simple life, to be free to wake a sleep with the rhythms of nature, to spend my time doing simple things to take care of the body, growing and gathering food, studying the wind and weather, building shelters, cutting wood, making fires, cooking food. It seemed to crystallize the notion that the simple life of taking care of the body needs, and doing this with friends and family in close community was the most fulfilling.

    So the trauma induced in my case was mostly with reintegration into a broken toxic system.

    I found the times which seemed to involve large amounts of dredging of the subconscious were the times when my dose was low. I was advised by the mushrooms and found it to be the case that taking a dose which passes by that threshold also passed the threshold of the chattering minds capability to operate and seemed to only leave the observer.

    I would happily concede that most of us, including myself are probably not equipped or prepared enough to start our explorations with them, but i think there could be a healthy and non traumatic system of using them for healing. Not to say that’s how they are used, or that it would be easy to achieve this, or that letter soup agencies and shady shamans haven’t used them for huge amounts of trauma and manipulation.

    Just some of my thoughts, it was great to delve deeper into your feelings on the subject.

    A

    Jasun:

    My impression after the talk was of having a high-energy/density experience of myself, sort of like a bottle that was spilling out more than it seemed possible to contain; interesting contrast with the last podcast, and even the current one with Gary, in which I felt tongue-tied. I am looking forward to hearing it back.

    Regarding psychedelics, I started using them intensively at age 23, and continued roughly till age 35 (my last “trip” was in 2003), so that’s a 12-yr period. My view now is, was it OK that I did so many psychedelics? Yes. Is it OK that I do them now? No. I tend to extend that to others also. The question as to whether they did more harm than good is unanswerable because I would have to have a psychedelic-history free psyche to compare to, one that was also my own psyche. My largely anti-psychedelic stance is based on a combination of my own experience and observation of those who have relied on psychedelics to get to the “truth,” most of whom seem unbalanced in specific ways that can be tentatively attributed to the drugs. My brief experience talking to you makes me think you are an exception to that observation, as you didn’t display the usual “tells” of grandiose cosmic thinking, excess intensity, ego inflation, fragmentation, and so on (simply put many entheogen-users show symptoms of being traumatized combined with the delusion that these symptoms are somehow evidence of their spiritual depth and drive).

    I wrote about the energetic harm which I believe these substances do, it’s linked in the article section of my website if you are interested. It’s a counter-position that I take within a context of general avocation of these drugs; if I were talking to someone who had never tried them & believed they were 100% harmful, I would take a different position, obviously.

    J

    Aaron:

    For me it felt similar in some ways to a post psychedelic trip state. Like i had just experienced something extremely high energy and needed to unpack and integrate it all. Which isn’t too surprising considering your considerable talent for honesty and analysis of psyches. I think it was an honest and liminal discussion and might be of interest / help to others like us seeking integration, wholeness, clarity, and peace.

    I will try to take a look at that article, i certainly have the sense that psychedelic substances can have profound non physical or energetic effects on us.

    Regarding trauma. I am on board with the thinking you have been crystallizing around this issue over the years. One thing to add is the possibility that we don’t all come here from the same place. I think that some people / psyches / souls are inherently more traumatized by the very act of being incarnated here as a human. I have a sense that there are two main systems at play in our universe / simulation / game field. One being the vampirec, parasitic, fear based, scarcity mode of operation. The other being the loving, generative, abundance based mode of operation. I have a strong sense that my previous experience of existing was not in a physically consumptive system. Ie here on earth animal life needs to physically consume something else to sustain itself. That requirement creates an inherent violence in our very mode of being. This is a long winded way of saying while i don’t rule out the possibility of sexual, mkultra, or other classic severe traumas in my past life I can 100% say i have always been traumatized by the forced requirement to injure another life form to continue my life. However many people don’t seem to share this trauma, or they haven’t acknowledged it at the very least. Perhaps i come from a race of trees creatures 😛

    This is not a secret pro vegan ploy im trying to slip in, (i’m not a vegan). I do find it odd however that the consumption of animal flesh is something that has been totally normalized. The fact that the sustenance for our civilization is the ritualized, mechanized, industrialized sacrifice of animals . Its so easy for us to be shocked by human torture and sacrifice. It doesn’t seem to be the case in regards to the rampant animal sacrifice, animal testing etc. It surely must have strong energetic effects on us, possibly even consuming the trauma of those animals in the food / products we consume, apply to our faces etc.

    It’s a long shot but perhaps the alien outsider with advanced tech coming down and forcibly harvesting energy, reproductive material, fear, and pain is some sort of reflection of our own races behavior towards less “advanced” life forms here.

    A

    Jasun:

    >>This is a long winded way of saying while i don’t rule out the possibility of sexual, mkultra, or other classic severe traumas in my past life I can 100% say i have always been traumatized by the forced requirement to injure another life form to continue my life. However many people don’t seem to share this trauma, or they haven’t acknowledged it at the very least. Perhaps i come from a race of trees creatures 😛

    always? aren’t your first experiences of this pre-memory?

    I am wary of these expanded outward interpretations that are sort of circular logic and introduce a fantastic element to explain a mundane one. Maybe someone used food to lure you into a trap as an infant ~ to throw out a random possibility of a mundane explanation for a mundane complex…

    I agree about the downside of eating animals and the oblivion that surrounds it, but I think there are many psychological and sociological models to try out and combine that don’t require a whole-cloth speculation

    >>It’s a long shot but perhaps the alien outsider with advanced tech coming down and forcibly harvesting energy, reproductive material, fear, and pain is some sort of reflection of our own races behavior towards less “advanced” life forms here.

    Or phantasy projection of it outward onto the screen of the world?

    Our first food source is via the mother; then traditionally, hunting with the father, who brings home the bacon & teaches us to do the same. The sort of alienation with biological existence you’re describing seems likely to relate to something hacking into that original program, IMO, as in my semi-random example of the child who is turned into prey, sexual or otherwise.

    J

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  4. wow, i think. luckily for that guy’s audience their problem has been clearly identified. in under 3 minutes, the first 3 minutes of the talk featured on his u tube channel no less.
    shall i quote? nah, i’ll take my best shot, give me a moment, let me think about it for a sec. ah yes, . . . if you are thinking without knowing you are thinking, you are confused about who and what you are . . .
    brilliant really, if you think about this, un self-consciously of course, you’ll not fail to grasp that out of the 29,000 views that would cover, oh, let’s see, just about everyone.
    i wonder what the proposed solution is this time? can’t . . . . think clearly . . . . must . . . wait, that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my re . . . . lol . . . egion.
    you know me, jasun, i had to take a gander, as i’d never heard of him.
    ouch- do you think he’ll read this? could his ego take it, do you think? i was aware i was thinking this AS i was typing. with 2 fingers.
    excellent show, can relate, and the music is not falling on deaf ears either. you catch my drift.

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  5. Hi Jasun,

    Just visited your podcast again and really enjoy your open chats like this one with “regular” people who don’t have career agendas to spruke.

    Thank you!

    For anyone who has been noting the wanderings of past liminalists like Neil Kramer, there is a revealing podcast he just did in the APC arena where he speaks of an entheogen based encounter with a nordic being and the advice he took from this encounter.

    http://truthfrequencyradio.com/philosophy-and-the-holographic-universe-with-george-kavassilas/

    The penny sort of drops once you hear this one.

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    • damnet Jstar you could have given us a timestamp so we didn’t have to listen through it all… 🙂 That website is frightening. I wish Neil nothing but love and look forward to his return to a more liminal space. Start around 53:00 if anyone is curious to hear the part Jstar mentioned. Would you mind unpacking what you found interesting about Neil’s comments?

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  6. Travis wrote: “I guess I’ve always been able to get information and ideas through someone without getting hung up on the person themselves. For instance, I was not even aware that he was so popular, hadn’t even crossed my mind, until y’all pointed it out. I’d say who gives a rats foot. To me the concepts and ideas is what is the important part. Whether it’s bullshit or not. If the presenter is a stand up person, all the better. If not. I take the nuggets and run.”

    Concepts & ideas are a dime a dozen and IMO of no inherent value. What has value is the transmission coming through “the person themselves”, in other words the medium is the only message. An idea that is fully embodied is not an idea but a transmission. One that isn’t embodied isn’t really even an idea, it’s a cover or a cloak or a Trojan Horse for whatever that psychic fragment is really transmitting (generally, the wonders of fragmentation, one way or another).

    My guess (only a guess) is that this can and often does relate to the size of a person’s platform, how wide an audience their ideas are reaching. Maybe because most people are fragmented they are more quickly drawn to powerful fragments than they are to souls in process of integration, i.e., to people who are selling an answer rather than asking difficult & generally painful questions.

    I know I probably take it too far myself, to the point of dogma, when I quickly lose interest in someone due to the size of their platform, hence my citing my own ego into the mix. Still there does appear to be a clearly traceable correlation between popularity/success and lack of embodiment, as I attempted to map with POI. It may have to do with charisma. This speaker was quite charismatic, I noticed.

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    • All I can say is that I find it much more profitable to work on refining my own sensibilities, and uncovering my own patterns, then getting to enmeshed with fantasies of how someone else is or is not.
      If we are getting hung up on personalities, I would think more refining of our sensibilities is certainly needed.
      If some wanker ( possibly Englishes finest expression btw) alerts me to a sunset, his wankerdom ( although may ruin this particular sunset for me) it will do nothing to diminish my enjoyment of sunsets.
      If it does. I definitely have a different problem than the wanker.

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      • …In fact we should really be more appreciative of wankers. They are constantly giving us lessons on how not to be. Also they are much more plentiful than the wise old sages.

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        • At this point I’m not sure what you are addressing. Who is getting enmeshed with fantasies about how someone else is?

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  7. Travis wrote:
    “I guess I’ve always been able to get information and ideas through someone without getting hung up on the person themselves.
    ———————————————

    Me too; partially due to my contrarian nature born of often being “the fly in the butter milk; but also because of deliberate exercise on my part during any types of racial discussions or identity based exchanges with people where the tendency is for everyone to talk like a lawyer; i.e, attempt to mislead you with true statements in order to get you take make assumptions.

    I worked with a blind guy who told me although he wasn’t sure what a white person was; he was sure he was one.

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  8. Hi guys,

    Yes, re NK – I was referring to his sharing of the Salvia experience and his use of entheogens to seek assistance on the path. Specifically, mentioning the advice from the Nordic being who visited him to “…relax and know that the coming earth changes will be beautiful and all is going according to plan …”

    For me, it was an ah ha moment in understanding the directional or energetic changes in his persona over the last years. He used to be quite cutting edge and rebellious in his offerings – which I quite liked. No offence intended at all, just an observation on my behalf. We all walk our individual paths and NK has offered up great insights over the years.

    Agreed that show he as on is rather naff and co guesting with George Kavassilis…don’t get me started!

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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  9. Hey mahn ,
    Your post reminded me of a post about provisional living by the Archdruid called “the rock by lake silvaplana” dealimg with Nietzsches philisophy of eternal return and how it drove him to suicide . I

    http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/the-rock-by-lake-silvaplana.html

    I guess its no surprise you encountered these shards of despair while completely disembodied on drugs. The good adruid , god bless his Appalachian socks , says that Nietzsxhe failed to comprehend that the opposite of a bad thing can also be a a bad thing , i like that .

    Have been dropping your name around online campus with some zelous young new agers , you may have incoming ! If not , i’ll keep at it , ha ha

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