ITT: Confess your WOO!

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

One thing i've always loved about Discordianism is the ability to be your own cult leader. To define what one believes for oneself without some ass with a funny hat and a book tell you whats right and wrong. Given this freedom of course, why wouldnt one dabble in the weirder, spicier, more adventurous entrees of the philosophical buffet? i know i always have and i'm betting i'm not alone. So i've been thinking what we need here is a place to bring out our weirdest beliefs, the irrational, the superstitious, the absolute bugfuck, and talk about them without judging mocking or deciding who's imaginary friends are the best. I'll go first.

-in addition to being a Pope, I am also a Dudeist priest, because apparently one joke religion wasn't enough for me
-In addition to that, I am also a Unitarian Universalist, because it's nice to have a community of people around me who, as far as i can tell, worship The Idea of Not Being An Asshole.
-I dabble in Chaos magic and such and the reason i'm not more into it is I'm a little afraid it might a actually work.
-I also dabble in a bit of Zen buddhism, specifically listening to Alan Watts whenever i'm bored.
-I have listened to Grant Morrison describe the universe as a giant life form (like a Space baby or a giant egg) and decided fuck it, i like it, makes sense to me.
-I am you and you are me and we are all together. koo koo ka choo

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am a Discordian and a Subgenius, and I have Last Thursdayist leanings.

But mostly I'm a Subgenius, I think.  They understand doom.  They are no less prone to infighting and toxicity, of course, but they are less self-righteous about it.  There's no posing behind ideological bullshit, Legume hates Stutler, Nenslo hates everyone, and nobody claims to have the "moral high ground".  It's refreshing, in a way.

I frequently assume that educated people are by definition better people. 

I have become emotionally-fatigued about justice, and the fate of the world, and all of God's horrible little children.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Also

- I spent 15 years trying to be something I'm not.  I don't recommend that to anyone.
- I spent 6 years allowing myself to be destructively conditioned by an abusive person.  I also do not recommend that to anyone.
- I tried kicking monkeys into the future, which was stupid.  If you want them to accept it, you have to sell it to them.
- I haven't been to Boston for like four and a half years.

[Ben Shapiro]

The only constant in the multiverse is Texas.
Rock n Roll isn't for the weak that's why there's Yoga.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

There is a law, like a law of physics but worse, that says the universe and everything that happens inside it must take the most tedious path possible. For any given number of equally plausible explanations for any phenomenon, the most boring one will always turn out to be the correct one.

The path that leads to enlightenment also leads to sneaking around in the dark in your own house at 3 AM trying to evade phantom cops and stubbing your toe on the fucking coffee table again, and that's why nobody's interested.

What happened to the 1960s is personified by Pink Floyd: a few people that could have threatened the establishment let their art go to their heads and turned into High Definition Showcase caricatures of themselves.

[Faust]

Traditional follower of Esoteric Order of Dagon here, I'm just an old fashioned guy who likes a cold beer, long strolls on moonlit beaches and living in fear of the dreamer waking and the universe ceasing to be.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I'm about 90% certain that multiple versions of this world exist and that the universe is entirely electrical, that is to say that "gravity" is merely the electromagnetic force operating on an unthinkable scale because mass is in fact infinite... and we and the "universe" are just charge coming off of a hyper-particle and accelerating towards another.

Also... sometimes it would seem that God responds to my prayers. This is not always a good thing like they tell you in the churches. Maybe I need to swear and cuss less, but G don't seem to mind. If anything it's better than all the "praise" spam G usually gets. G assures me that the whole gravity thing above is nothing I need worry about.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I can't shake the simulation hypothesis. I don't believe it, on account of I'm physically incapable of believing anything but it does seem statistically most likely that we're in the matrix or, more precisely, we're in a Matrix within a Matrix, within a near infinite regression of matryoshka simluations.

I prefer science and technology to religion and superstition but, that said, if you really want to properly fuck with people's heads religion and superstition has the scientific method banged to rights

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

I believe transhumanism is the next logical step in human evolution and, if implemented properly, has the potential to make us MORE human not less, by bypassing certain defects leftover from being cavemen, such as the monkeysphere problem. I think that in the future they'll come up with a kind of synthetic neural pathway that allows the frontal lobe to respond to stimuli at the same time as the older lizard brain parts, thus allowing our brains to respond with logic about as quickly as it does emotion.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's not,but it will make humanity more hilarious. Class warfare with competiting human upgrades.

[Cramulus]

Okay, here's a few....

I'm in a Gurdjieff cult. I'm trying on the beliefs, to see how they fell. So far so good! The big stumbling block for me right now is trying to transition from a post-modern / absurdist worldview (ie, the universe is inherently meaningless, but meaning can be created) - to a modern worldview (the universe is a living organism with needs and desires, which generate a form of intrinsic meaning). Eventually I hope they will teach me the Sacred Movements that will awaken me and raise not just my own consciousness, but the universe's consciousness.

I don't believe most people have a soul, but through hard work ("conscious labor and intentional suffering"), I think you can create something like a soul within yourself.

I don't literally believe in ghosts but I used to live in a creepy old farmhouse, and haunting (or a poltergeist or something?) is the best explanation for a few of the weird things that happened there over the years.

I'm in a gray area of belief on some of the more rigorous parapsychological experiments.

I believe that Timothy Leary was able to astrally project himself out of solitary confinement. Robert Anton Wilson's account (I think it was in Quantum Psychology?) of being visited by Spirit-Leary struck me as 'not a coincidence'.

I do not practice chaos magic anymore. I do think it works, but I only buy into Peter Carroll's "Psychological model", that is, it's all in your head ("You just have no idea how big your head is" -Lon Milo DuQuette). But a few of the tricks I picked up while I did practice Chaos Magic still work 100% well for me today. Mostly, techniques I developed for focusing and centering myself.

I've had one or two "gnostic experiences", moments when the GLARING LIGHT OF TRUTH shown through the fabric of reality and I was able to see things "how they really are", from outside of myself.  Of course, you never know if that's just the demiurge, fuckin with y'all. But like Kierkegaard says... if you start hearing voices that might be God, maybe you're crazy, but you've gotta proceed anyway.

If I want to be really straight, I'm an agnostic, but also - these days I believe in God. But only by using the word God in a very specific way.. The Alpha and Omega. By God I mean the Entire Universe At Once. The whole thing. All the matter, all the space, all the shit that happens. God is the entity which produces the sound OM. So the word God is a bit misleading, because it implies a dude. I like the word Gurdjieff uses instead, "The Absolute", the totality of existence all added up with nothing left over. So maybe that's not even woo. But when somebody talks about God, I just mentally substitute A:Ω.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

It's not,but it will make humanity more hilarious. Class warfare with competiting human upgrades.

Hey, if I can't live in GitS, I'll settle for Transmetropolitan.

[Ziegejunge]

This is good. I think woo is important for a variety of reasons.

- When I was three years old, I asked my mom to teach me how to be weird. "Just be yourself," she told me. Truer words and all that...

- I believe in some version of Mythic Time, or Dreamtime (if I recall correctly, Gurdjieff called it "Heropass" in Beelzebub's Tales.) Basically, some non-chronological river of time that interacts with and sometimes bisects our Chronological Time, but which does not run exclusively parallel to it.

- I believe that human consciousness, and perhaps even other forms of consciousness, can by nature interact with both Mythic Time and Chronological Time. The idea that "we are the universe observing itself" perhaps fits this notion.

- My current hypothetical cosmological model resembles a yin-yang extrapolated outward into a sphere. My hunch is that this universal sphere "breathes," so that as the darkness expands in one pool, the light side contracts in the other pool, and vice-versa. I also suspect that human consciousness has some effect on this "breathing," but I am honest about the likelihood of this suspicion being due to anthropological conceit.

- I use the light and dark metaphor above, but only reluctantly. The older i get, the less charm said metaphor holds for me. If we were mole-people instead of monkey-people, for example, I expect we would focus a lot more on good and bad vibrations and less on light and dark. Whether or not those means would lead to a different end, who can say? I mostly just don't want to unduly demonize darkness nor sanctify light.

- To put it another way, I believe that Michael Ende's The Neverending Story (the book, not necessarily the cinematic adaptations) is a fairly robust metaphor for my hypothetical model of reality disguised as a children's book, hence adopting AURYN as my avatar here. In that story, the protagonist, Bastian, is literally transported from Chronological Time to Mythic Time because Mythic Time needs him to observe it and interact with it or else it will cease to exist, consumed by the Nothing.

     Once there, Bastian saves the day by naming the sovereign of the world and discovers hence that while in Fantastica he has the power to make his wishes into reality -- but realizes almost too late that with every wish, he loses a memory of his life in the real world and must quest for a way home at risk of compromising his very identity.

- I'm also very fond of the idea that humans are "a species with amnesia." That also fits The Neverending Story metaphor assuming that Earth is Fantastica: according to most mythological histories, we came here, starting naming shit, and began reworking reality according to our individual wills until we forgot where we originally "came from," at least in a spiritual sense.

- I'm currently very interested in learning more about shamanism and the role of spiritual leaders -- especially shamanistic ones -- with respect to society and history. Part of me can't help but wonder if there is some value to the role that Western Civilization has diminished to our collective detriment.

[hooplala]

I am a discordian. I also dabble in chaos magic, but I am super lazy about it and rarely do much... which is why I lean toward chaos magic, it's the one of the only systems where that sort of devotion is permissible.

My personal woo:

-I believe in demons. or rather, I believe in discarnate entities which have never held physical bodies - my beliefs in this subject are heavily influenced by the (admittedly rather sloppy) writings of John Keel
-I sort of believe in ghosts, but my personal belief is that they are some form of 'photography' or recording we do not yet understand
-I think its possible something like sasquatches exist, though I am not married to them being entirely physical
-I fully believe in multiple universes, and my theory is they are inside us, deeper and deeper down, and outside our universe going farther and farther up

There may be more I cannot recall at the moment.

BTW, I love this thread, Chelagoras. I haven't fully read everyone else's because I am at work, but will be devouring this evening.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

Thanks. This has got to be one of the liveliest discussions I've seen around here in years.