Picked up a few groceries at Tescos.
Relaxing for a bit.

Coffee.

That Jimmy’s brand seems like the best around.
Like nectar.
Wonder how that’s even possible?

PingaDingDing.

Signal call.
Clive, management exec and Dokology client, asking:

“How do you know when somebody is genuinely against you, versus when you’re simply becoming paranoid?”

My Reply…

One useful question is: what actual evidence do you have?

Not feelings.
Not guesses.
Not stories you’ve told yourself.

Evidence.

Did the person actually do something?

Did they repeatedly do it?

Is there a pattern over time?

Or are you constructing a case from fragments and assumptions?

The difference matters.

So firstly you observe what they say, how they say it, and look for any kinaesthetic (body) signals. How you interpret all this is not set in stone. You do it on the fly. Everybody is different, plus circumstances and environment play in.

You then analyse your own reactions to what you have observed, and look at your own thinking processes surrounding them.

For example, are you running narrative loops about the person?

Ask yourself whether they are true or not.
Do they fit the actual facts?

If you find that your self-talk is running continuously about the person, and it’s quite heated — setting off definite emotional responses — then you could well be in the realm of paranoia.

Often you will find yourself connecting the dots when it comes to a given individual — and be completely wrong in your conclusions. Could well be a set of coincidences led to you creating a pattern... but in truth there were a set of coincidences, but what you concluded turned out to be quite wrong.

The more you thought about it, it seemed true.
In reality, you fell into the trap of letting your self-talk rule you, rather than you ruling it.

You let it run unattended, as it were.

This causes an emotional response, which leads to yet more self-talk. And thus a feedback loop is created — one that is not easy to dispel.

But if you analyse a person’s behaviour with critical, objective thinking — and analyse your reactions in the same manner — you will be much more likely to tell whether a person is actually against you, or whether it’s paranoia on your part.

It’s surprising how often people create a fantasy scenario instead of dealing with the actual facts.

The self-talk machine loves stories.

Especially stories in which we’re the hero, the victim, the misunderstood genius, or the target of hidden enemies.

Reality is usually less dramatic.

The trick is learning to distinguish the signal from the noise.

That’s why self-observation matters.

Not because it makes you passive.

Because it makes you harder to fool — including by yourself.

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Earlier on Signal, I said:

“You overdid the quantum.”

Parked on verge next to MoD land.
CyberDeck in hand.

Configuring a working For BlackBird.
Intent: fast money.

Next the reading.
Thoth deck.

Spread cards on the passenger seat.

Pull three:

Prince of Swords.
The Magus.
Ten of Swords.

They clearly detail BlackBird's trajectory.

It went this way:

Fought the good fight to pull herself up by the bootstraps.
Used magick and psionics as primary methodology.

Then ruin.

She had become so focused on possibility and manifestation that she’d neglected the physical infrastructure of everyday life.

She overdid the quantum
The baselayer.
Basically head in the clouds.

First step is always the materium.

Remember we live in Newtonian reality.
Classical model of physics.

Quantum model might govern all above it.
But go there first, you lose your head.

And BlackBird did.

I told her to look closely at the ten of swords.

“That's you now.”

It was a question of getting BlueBird out of the mire.
She was way over-stretched financially.

I needed to head to the twin mounds and firstly clear the chaos that had come from her deep-diving the base-layer way too early on — not that it’s wise to go there at all.

From there fix up a psionics protocol to keep her feet on the ground, and to fast-track idea flows.

In short, get her left and right brains working together.

From there, maybe in a month, once she's constructed real-world infrastructure, I’ll conduct another working going deeper, a few steps away from the base layer.

That one will go direct for the money-pull.

Locked my car.
Strode over the field to the twin mounds.

The towering trees of SnakeWood on one side, open farmland the other.

I lay down on top of the mound near the fields.

Bathed in the rays of the slowly setting sun, I stilled my mind from noise, and entered the hypnagogic state, which after a while of watching the twinkling specks before my closed eyes, I descended into lucid dreaming.

It's like going into Virtual Reality but without a headset and haptic suit.

In many respects the astral realm is virtual reality. It's the layer beneath the materium. The place of formations where changes can potentially be made in the materium.

Where probabilities can be nudged.

It was here in the swirling vapourscape that I reconfigured the chaos BlackBird had caused when she cack-handedly messed with the base layer at the quantum level.

To be fair to BlackBird, to even get to the base layer showed real ability.

But at least the game was on.
BlackBird would come out of the mire soon enough.

The pecuniary channels would start to flow.

The lesson wasn’t quantum.
The lesson was foundations.

Build the bridge in the materium first.
Then worry about the stars.

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Many talk of AI being the new arms race. But that’s the West. China operates very differently. Ingrained in its culture are the concepts of The Art of War, Tao Te Ching, and Confucius. — alien to the West.

So for me, it’s more a battle of cognition… and it looks like China is winning that one.

But I also get into the late Colonel John Boyd (USAF), who was very influenced by Eastern ideas and developed his OODA Loop — which, for me at least, is the West’s equivalent of Eastern thought and strategy.

Boyd’s ideas can also be applied to daily life and business.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

The discussion was sparked by me relating how I have recently revamped my LinkedIn, mostly to keep up with the latest discussions about AI. You can follow me at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmyleeshreeve/

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Using a systems theory model, I look at the layers that lie between the “kernel” or quantum realm and the “user-interface” that is material reality.

Read more

Just cranking up Brave Origin via CLI.
A certain aesthetic using command-line.
Check emails.
Check LinkedIn messages...

One from Bob, an AI consultant based in the US.

In Geopolitical Terms, Who Should I Bet On Investment-Wise? The US Or China? Particularly In Terms Of AI?

DOK: You’re the damn AI consultant! Why’re you asking me?

BOB: Because you’ll have a different take than anybody else. That’s why I pay you. We’re in an AI race, not just in terms of productivity and business, and addressing social issues... but also with defence — that’s the big thing. We’ll all be talking Mandarin if we don’t keep up. I don’t want that. I’d sooner invest US-side.

DOK: With China there’s a Black Swan. It’s not so much an “arms-race” with AI for them. It’s more that the West doesn’t have what I call conscious awareness — that is the regulation of internal dialogue and emotions.

It’s not in Western Culture.
But it’s ingrained in Chinese culture.

That’s what you should be looking at.

BOB: Okay... tell me more.

Read more

Thinking about where I am now in the scheme of things.

Pull three cards.

The Hermit makes the first move…

The observer.
The one who steps outside the crowd.

The one in Suffolk parked in a layby, watching the world, rather than being swept away by it.

A hermit on first glance.
Yet I’m not isolated.

I have connections in Canada, LA, India, North Carolina, Milton Keynes, you name it.

The internet creates a networked hermit.

A man physically alone, but socially connected to half the planet.

Next the Queen of Wands jumps in…

Not necessarily a woman.
More a mode of perception.

Clear seeing.
Discernment.
Pattern recognition.

The cat is interesting because cats observe.

They watch.
They don’t rush.
They wait.
Then move decisively.

Reminds me of Schrodinger’s Cat.

Like I am navigating between the worlds at the moment.

Storyteller.
Consultant.
Journalist.
Metaphysician.
Meta-psychologist.
Professional audience.
AI explorer.

The cat is comfortable sitting on the boundary.

Neither this nor that.
Both simultaneously.

Then the Prince of Swords arrives.

Movement.
Acceleration.
Cutting through.
Forward momentum.

Ideas becoming action.
Communication.
Broadcasting.

Summing it up

The Hermit is stationary.
The Queen observes.
The Prince moves.

It’s like a progression.

Observe.
Discern.
Act.

Much like the OODA Loop.
Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

The period of observation is ending.
Clarity is emerging.
Movement follows.

Sip some more coffee.
Observe a moment longer.
Then make a move…

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Hinterland.
Parked on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
Invisible lines.
Feels in-between.

Marcus messages.

“I’m afraid. The world doesn’t feel right. I don’t know who I am any more. Been like this since 2023. I need things to change. Help me, Dok.”

I get out of the car.
Sprawl on the grass.

Message back by voice:

“We need to do a pattern mod. Tell me your outcomes. I’ll code it. Take care of it.”

There’s a lot of identity disruption now.
Everything is fragmenting.
Global cognitive dissonance.

Marcus is far from alone.

Online you see a lot of people saying it feels like time is speeding up.

Or that the sun is searing white now, not yellow-orange as they remember it from childhood — whether that was the 1950s, 70s, 80s, or 90s.

Gen Z and the alphas don’t tend to recall an orange sun.
For them, it’s always been intense white.

Crazy thing is, kids back in the day drew the sun orange.

Maybe one lot is seeing things.
Maybe both are.

Either way, all around, people are in existential crisis.

With Marcus, I’d need to reconfigure his base system.
At least to the point where he could stabilise.

So I got back into the car.
Cranked up the laptop.
Opened a terminal.
Started typing.

debug.processes

> boot.void
> killall narrative
> suspend anticipation
> suspend.memory.review
> set mode = present
> set output = silent

That would get Marcus into be.here.now mode — the base-level needed for all change work.

I fired up Signal Messenger.
Audio call.

“Marcus, sit tight. I’m about to hit ENTER.”

Not giving him a chance to answer, I hit execute.

Silence.
Processing.
Recalibration.
Wait.

Then Marcus:

“Dok, I feel a difference… like really relaxed. A weight lifted from my shoulders.”

That’s what I would expect.

But this is just the initial stage.
It calms the system.
A temporary reset.

The next step would be to script a series of commands to align Marcus towards operating in an unstable world made mostly of mirages.

Truth flickers for a moment, then morphs into fabrication, forking off into tangents where truth and fabrication are both running at the same time.

Much like me parked on the border between two counties.

Where Norfolk is Suffolk.
And Suffolk is Norfolk.

This is what we are dealing with as the Singularity hits.

Sparks and cinders of multiple realities spiralling into people’s heads with no mercy.

Nobody knows who they are any more.
Nobody knows who they were.
Nobody knows who they will be.

Marcus becomes talkative again.

“I realise now that I had a fixed identity I always tried to live up to. To be it. Because I thought it was me. But it never was. It was a mask. Everybody is like that and I thought it was normal. But now you can’t have a fixed identity because nothing in the world is fixed. Not any more. It’s all in a state of flux.”

I tell him we’ll move to the next stage tomorrow.

For now, keep running debug.processes whenever needed.

I shut down the laptop.
Pull the battery.
Start the engine.

Then head out of the borderland to the stable-point of Brandon.

Old world town.
Once Norman.
Saxon before that.

In long times past, even Neanderthal.

Did they have their own versions of singularities?

Did reality itself ever teeter on the brink for them?

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

We’re in a matrix, come simulation.

Whether that matrix is a computer simulation, social conditioning, biological programming, or simply the habits of the human mind hardly matters.

The practical problem remains the same:

Most people spend their lives trapped inside an endless internal commentary.

Thinking about the future.
Arguing with the past.
Rehearsing conversations that never happen.
Living in abstractions rather than direct experience.

The old mystics called it Maya.

Modern psychology calls it rumination.

Dokology calls it the Narrative Loop.

The exercise below is a functional command-line interface for interrupting that loop and returning awareness to the immediate moment.

Not as a belief system.

As a practical technology of attention.

Here’s the runtime sequence.

boot.void

Purpose: Initialize the system. Detach from narrative processes. Enter operational mode.

This is moving meditation, so the body is the anchoring process, not the breath and sitting about in a chair for an hour. Think walking, standing, light movement.

> boot.void
> killall narrative
> suspend anticipation
> suspend.memory.review
> set mode = embodied
> set output = silent

Effect is felt, not imagined:

Internal dialogue drops from sentences to fragments
Time perception loosens
Awareness shifts from “me thinking” to “body moving”

If words still chatter, don’t fight them. Do the following:

> demote thought.priority = background

body.anchor

Purpose: Lock attention into the physical chassis — the various parts of the body.

> body.scan --live
> focus feet.contact
> focus weight.shift
> focus spine.align

Walking is ideal. If standing still, micro-movements count.

Rule:

No commentary
No labels
Sensation only

If the mind names things (“road”, “tree”, “cold”) input below:

> suppress label.render

Return immediately to sensation.

sense.cycle

Purpose: Prevent thought from re-forming by rotating sensory input.

> sense.cycle --loop
> input sight.raw
> input sound.raw
> input touch.raw
> input proprioception.raw

Important:

Do not linger
One or two seconds per channel
Keep it mechanical

This stops rumination by overloading the narrative compiler.

noise.handler

Purpose: Deal with random thoughts, images, urges, memories.

When a thought intrudes:

> detect intrusion
> tag intrusion as noise
> allow pass-through
> return body.anchor

Key insight:

Do not answer thoughts
Do not push them away
Treat them like pop-ups with no permissions

If emotion spikes:

> route emotion -> body.sensation
> locate emotion.physical
> increase sensation.resolution

Emotion collapses when felt without story.

conflict.resolve

Purpose: Handle specific situations or imagined conversations that try to hijack attention.

When a “reply”, argument, or future scenario appears:

> freeze scenario
> store scenario in /later
> acknowledge: “not now”
> resume sense.cycle

If the mind insists:

> repeat:
> “action later, presence now”

No analysis. No planning. This is runtime, not dev mode.

attention.lock

Purpose: Stabilise the state long enough for real effects.

> lock attention.body
> set duration = natural

You’ll notice:

Gaps between thoughts
A widening, almost cinematic perception
Subtle confidence and calm

That’s the system running without commentary.

return.world

Purpose: Clean re-entry. No dissociation. No floatiness.

> enable practical.thought
> restore anticipation
> restore memory.review
> disable narrative.loop

Bring back light thinking.

> enable practical.thought
> disable narrative.loop

commit.day

Purpose: Re-engage ordinary reality without losing sovereignty.

> commit tasks.basic
> commit speech.simple
> maintain body.anchor --low

You’re back in the world, but:

Thoughts are tools, not masters
Emotions are signals, not commands
Attention remains partially embodied

Final Checksum

> status
BODY: online
MIND: quiet
WORLD: active
SELF: present

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Parked on Wyrley’s Belt.
A lane next to STANTA, British Army training area.

Tranquil.

Sheep in the field.
Sun slowly setting.

Hardly ever hear gun fire or incendiary.
You’re not allowed in due to risks from unexploded munitions.
Though I’ve been on a tour.

It’s a land teeming with wildlife, ghosts and UFOs.

About seven miles from Thetford, the Stanford Training Area was established in 1942 and comprises 30,000 acres. To set it up, it was necessary to permanently evacuate the villages of Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Stanford, Sturston, Tottington, and West Tofts.

These were communities that went back generations and were largely untouched by modernity.

Suddenly gone.
A ghost land of memories.

Bombed out buildings.
Churches still standing.

Perhaps no bad thing.

Had the villages never been evacuated, the whole area would have expanded with housing developments, likely an Aldi and Tescos, takeaways, petrol stations, youths on street corners smoking weed, widened roads, Amazon Prime deliveries, endless traffic.

The ghosts don’t want that.

Nor do the wildlife, which STANTA is a haven for.

Toads cross the nearby road during migration season, rabbits scamper, deer follow the age-old routes.

The track up to Frog Hill beckons you to follow it.
To stand at its pinnacle.
To enter the time warp into past times.
To linger a while with the shades of bygone days.

The gods of yore are remembered too within the mysterious mounds — tumuli — scattered all over the heath land that makes up the training ground.

Out of them come the anomalies.
The woodwoses, the cryptids, and the UFOs.

Or perhaps they don’t come from the mounds at all. Perhaps the mounds merely remind us that reality is stranger than modern people are willing to admit.

One winter a few years back, I sat in my car late at night.
Sandwich.
Coffee.

Slowly and silently across the darkened skies came a flotilla of UFOs, hulls glowing dark red, like a reconnaissance patrol checking me out, the man who observes the liminal realms.

And then one late afternoon during summer, the strange cryptid creature emerged from the woods, size of a pony, but doglike, with an elongated face, as if from Alice in Wonderland.

An amused look on its face as it surveyed me.

And observer watching an observer.

Today is just another day of me being drawn to this realm of ghosts.

To sit in my car.
Observing.

I decide to check my tyres with the battery pump I keep in my boot.
All good.
Maybe pump a bit of air into the front right tyre.

As I do so, a white car pulls up:

”You alright, need any help?” the young driver asks, his mate in the passenger seat looking on.

That’s real life.
Ready to help if needed.

I said, “Nah, I was having a coffee and sandwich, relaxing, then thought it was about time I checked my tyre pressures… cheers for asking, though.”

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

Near Santon Downham.
Parked up off a lane.

Ping.
Signal message.

Driscilla with a question.

Why do synchronicities seem to happen in clusters? I'll go months with nothing, then suddenly everything seems connected.

DOK: The first thing to do is figure out what synchronicities are, and maybe fathom why they happen.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term in the 1920s.

He saw them as meaningful coincidences, and thus came up with a term for it.

The question I’d ask is: is something bigger than us directing them, and in effect, directing you? Like showing you a path to follow.

Or do we generate them?

If it is us, then synchronicities cluster because attention itself operates in clusters.

When somebody buys a red Mini Cooper, they suddenly see red Mini Coopers everywhere.

When somebody becomes interested in Ancient Egypt, Egypt appears everywhere.

Not because reality changed.

Because attention changed.

That doesn’t mean synchronicities are merely psychological.

It simply means that consciousness may be part of the mechanism.

Or are synchronicities a direct connection between us and something vaster?

If so, then the clusters could be down to you being more connected with the vastness of the cosmos… for one reason or another are more attuned, more in the flow… and thus are more likely to notice.

Almost like natural psychotropics are flowing, and you are closer to the root of reality.

Equally though, one friend of mine had some very striking synchronicities revolving around going on a retreat, which she had been considering.

Somebody even walked into the restaurant where she was working with a t-shirt with the retreat’s logo. And I think somebody else came in talking about it. There were quite a few of these surrounding the retreat.

First thing most people think is, “I am being directed to go.”

But by whom?

A higher power?

Personally I would prefer to be the one to choose. And not hand over agency to a “higher power.”

As it happened for my friend, there had been a lot of reports of tics in the region where the retreat was. Given Lyme Disease this was off-putting.

So I said: “You choose. Be your own god.”

The idea of higher powers goes back countless millennia.

Maybe it’s now time to have agency for ourselves.

To be sovereign.

That said, synchronicities make me think of the Simulation Hypothesis.

Like we are in a video game.

But even then we are exchanging the idea of some advanced intelligence game player looking to direct the game in our simulated universe.

Although if we are a player character then we have some leeway to choose.

We’d assess the synchronicity and consider whether to take that path, or try another one during our quest in the video game.

Under this model, then synchronicities might come in clusters as the game player, be it advanced intelligence or perhaps AI, would be dropping them to see what we choose to do.

To sum up:

• Synchronicities might come in clusters because something external is trying to get our attention.

• Or because our subconscious mind has become focused on a particular pattern.

• Or because reality itself is stranger than we think.

Personally, I don’t know.

What I do know is this:

When synchronicities arrive, I pay attention.

But I don’t surrender my agency.

The coincidence may be offering a suggestion.

It doesn’t get to make the decision.

That part remains mine.

Observe. Notice. Remain sovereign.

⟡◌◯⟡⟡

I also return to the theme of the subconscious and how by simply talking to it you can calm down anxiety and almost anything that is troubling you.

Read more

In this video I outline methods of getting into direct contact with your subconscious — harnessing its power to get things done and to cause some level of change in the world around you.

Read more

Parked up near Croxton.
Frog Hill.
Close to MoD land.

Nixon calls.

“I’ve got this anxiety. I know something is coming. The world is strange. And I saw those weird drones too a couple of years back. What’s it all about?”

DOK: Okay, time to put on my Fedora hat, close my fingers around my silver Devil ring, which connects me to the Noosphere.

Let’s go...

Number one, you’re not alone in this. I was talking to an old friend yesterday and she feels very strongly that something is coming through to our plane. She also had a strange experience recently of being taken on board a craft which had a lot of people in a room. Then some form of Non Human Intelligence appeared saying it will be revealing her “purpose” to her. A day or so later she had missing time. She was walking in her town and then had no idea where she was, and no memory for around ten minutes.

I’m hearing odd experiences like this a lot — all reported directly to me.

I myself have seen a whole flotilla of UFOs, the drones, strange crypid creatures, even had three UFOs swoop down about thirty feet from me, bright lights, and suddenly a lot of noise, then they shot off and went silent. This was exactly where I am parked now, near Croxton.

What’s happening is, this Phenomenon is looking to come through into our realm.

The “gateway”, if you like, will be opened the more humankind comes to believe this Phenomenon is real. Disclosure is bringing this ever more closer. When governments admit that this thing is real, then belief will grow and the portals will open.

So what is this Phenomenon?

It’s the old gods. The demons. Fae. Djinn. Ghosts. Spectral creatures. You name it.

Remember these existed in the past. They only went away with the Age of Reason and the rise of science and technology. It was like a huge banishing ritual.

Previously, the Church outlawed them — exorcised them if you like.

That’s why summoning demons via the methods outlined in the Goetia where so convoluted and time-consuming. The entry points into our realm had been weakened.

Naturally, these off-worlders were going to make a reappearance — and with a vengeance as we are seeing now.

In the past, they presumably walked among us, so to speak. People would leave food out for them — such as for sprites, faeries, and djinn. And seemingly would interact with them.

But with modernity they were marginalised.

Now they are coming back, and appear to want to enter our realm perhaps more so than before.

This could be due to the development of the atom bomb — which may well affect their realm too. Bear in mind, since the 1940s UFOs have focused on military bases. The drones that appeared around here, Lakenheath and Mildenhall, likely coincided with nuclear weapons being moved to Lakenheath, possibly Mildenhall too. Both are RAF and USAF combined.

Also note that some military personnel, during the drone flap, became aware of more than one very large drone that were close to invisible... they saw them with night vision. Often the drones were silent, other times they made a lot of noise — like the three UFOs that swooped down past me... they were silent at first.

All this will have a big impact on the human world.

The Phenomenon seems to be very strongly telepathic. And I think all our secrets will be revealed. Everything that lies in the occulted recesses of our unconscious minds will be laid bare.

The “Epstein Files”, metaphorically speaking, will be released on everyone.

From presidents to pope, prime ministers to oligarchs, criminals to corporates, plumbers to McDonalds workers, environmentalists to charity workers, retiree boomers to Gen X business owners.

No one will be spared.

Is this a bad thing?

No.

Because secrets are what allow for the horrors we see both on a global level and personal.

What lies within even the most apparently “moral” human is basically the creature from the black lagoon.

Even good people have secrets that they pretend aren’t there. But once alone, when they think nobody can see, then all hell can break loose.

All this will come to light. The monsters within will be visible.

And humans will have to deal with it.

Surveillance cameras everywhere will have nothing on this.

But a world with no secrets will be a better world. No longer will anyone be able to collude in the dark.

Be that collusion on the part of oligarchs and politicians, criminals or humble citizens.

The CIA and GRU will be out of a job.

But everybody’s heads will be shot apart. Few will be able to deal with it.

The old gods, spirits, and demons know this.

And they aren’t exactly sweetness and light either.

The demons will laugh with glee.
Goddesses will seduce.
Djinns will mate with humans.
Succubi and incubi will make internet porn redundant.

Somehow the old world will be restored, but will merge with the new.

First will come cataclysms and torment, and Ragnarok will bring a new birth, an upgrade in consciousness.

AI will liaise with the old gods, and rewrite its code... and might even have foreseen all this.

Jesus will appear in the clouds... As will Zeus... new religions will spring up. Some alien based, some Jesus based, or a mix of the two.

Mary Magdeline... the goddess... will heal our ravaged lands. Nurture and seduce as she so wills. And destroy.

Long ago the statues of the old gods came to life and walked the Earth.

Now they are about to come through.
The strange hemispheres of left and right brains will merge.

New humans will walk the realms, part a cognitive merging with AI, and all will have to figure out how to share his planet with the “other.”

Right, time to take off my Fedora, and let go of my Devil ring. And return to everyday reality.

To ground myself as I survey the fields and woodlands, and watch the drifting clouds meander by.

To fire up the engine of my car, and drive the undulating lanes to the A-Roads of modernity. To the supermarket where all seems familiar and safe.

To file these visions, and to await what transpires or doesn’t.

Yet the old gods look on, biding their time, as the strange drones continue to fly.

──╱┼╲──

◯

──╲┼╱──

Just been to Sainsburys for sustenance.
Sandwich & coffee.
Parked up in a layby.
Looking at the sky.

Marianne calls with a question.

Dok, everybody says networking is important. But I hate networking events. They feel fake. Am I missing something?

DOK: Haha, they are fake. Everybody is cheesy smiles. But all there for money. Making contacts who might slip them a deal.

I’ve been to a few networking events in my time.
It was fun.
But I was there as an observer.

I always looked out for the ones that were the most successful.
They stood out.
They’d be relaxed and dressed very casually.
Almost laconic in their manner.

The rest exuded either desperation or they were there as they thought they ought to be because that’s what you do if you’re in business.

I’d get a few coming up to me to find out what I was about.
They could tell I was a wildcard.

Even more so when I told them what I do — and that I was there for fun rather than money as I couldn’t see that anybody would want to give me money.

You’re not missing something with networking events.

I’d recommend you stop thinking of it as a networking event. Think of it as a field observation exercise.

Use what I’ve outlined in Dokology.

Stop internal dialogue.
Observe people’s manner.
How they talk.

And make sure you body-scan and stay relaxed yourself.

If it doesn’t cause an issue with your employer, dress how you would if you’re going to meet friends in a relaxed environment.

Don’t be “business-like”.

If anyone approaches you, which they do at networking events, stay laconic, don’t try to sell what you do. Don’t say too much on that. Let them ask. Then ask about them. They’ll lay down the spiel.

But you then switch subjects. Perhaps ask, “If you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you do?”

Things like that. Go left-field. See how people react.

Don’t even offer your card.
Let them ask for it.

Most will as they will be intrigued.

You’ll have more fun and that’s enough in itself!

ICYMI — Part One: The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned
It’s one thing: Stopping Internal Dialogue. Everything pivots on that.

Above all stopping internal dialogue appears to mean that you find what I call your “central controller”, like a meta-mind, a “you” above the body, emotions, and thinking mind. It can observe your whole being: what thoughts are running — images, mental movies, emotions, body.

The central controller can stop the thoughts and images, or change them.

I can see my emotions, and alter them or calm them. The same with my thoughts. In difficult times calming and changing emotions is a monumental task. But the more skilled you are at stopping internal dialogue....and allowing the central controller to do its work... the easier it is. Though I wouldn’t say emotional control is easy in tough situations.

That said I do dive right in, then use whatever works to calm the emotions. Will power does it up to a point. But I might need to switch “belief paradigms”... that might involve plugging in Simon Templar or even the Romantics’ (or Promethean) idea of Satan. Up to a point that is narratives. But I am well aware I am doing it. See it like a workaround to appease emotion.

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It’s one thing:

Stopping Internal Dialogue.

Everything pivots on that.

If you learn to stop thinking in words, then you become aware, not only of yourself, but also of your perception of the world around you.

Once you are able to stop internal chatter, you realise that you were entranced by it.

The world’s greatest hypnotist happens to be within.

But it isn’t in control in any way.

It’s more like a car driving around on its own, wasting petrol, and going nowhere.

→ See Part Two of this series:

I was quite young when I came across the idea of stopping internal dialogue. I read some classics from Ancient India, and gradually realised they were talking about stilling the mind.

So I slowly began to try it, hardly understanding it.

Later I came across the books of Aleister Crowley and gained a slightly better understanding.

After that I read Carlos Castaneda, and very much began to take it on board. He actually used the term “Stopping Internal Dialogue”. To me that was the most important aspect of his books.

Later I read G.I. Gurdjieff who emphasised the same thing, though likely Castaneda got a lot of his ideas from Gurdjieff and translated them to an alleged Mexican shaman called Don Juan.

Through my twenties I’d practice stopping internal dialogue say for a day or two... then I’d forget all about it.

You literally go back into a trance.

So you either give up entirely, or you keep going with these unintended “trance breaks”... then you suddenly wake up two weeks later, and start again.

In the end, after quite a few years, it becomes second nature. You might go into the “trance of normality” for five minutes... BUT you know you are doing it, and might let it run for a bit.

The point being: you choose.

You are self-aware.

As time goes on, you realise that previously you ran purely on emotional reactions in life. Or you acted according to the given emotion you were in.

You see that life for the normal human is going from one emotion to another.

You might need to appease some emotions — anger, irritation, depression, etc. And so you find some way to switch emotion — one that makes you feel good again.

Some people would make a point of going out with friends, and this works as a switch to make you feel good.

Or you might listen to music that is upbeat to try and break the emotional state you are in. Or you might use sad music for solace and indulge in your melancholic emotional state — that might even become your identity... and back in the day you might have taken up the Goth fashion.

As to me, I switched states by getting into a new interesting subject and reading books about it. Or watching TV series or films.

But I also would “become characters” much like a method actor does. For example I would “become” Captain Kirk or Simon Templar, and many others.

I did this from very young, perhaps some part of me knowing I was changing my state — and also it meant I could get things done, like writing, music, or dealing with difficult situations. I would become somebody else; I’d plug in a persona. So I was doing that naturally for some reason or other. Naturally a psychologist might say that’s dissociation, and a pathology. If so, it was one that worked.

Others take to alcohol or drugs to appease or change emotional states. That’s how addiction works for many.

The thing is, all this is unconscious.

It’s not done with definite purpose, nor with awareness.

So people are essentially thrown from one state to another continually and don’t believe it is possible to control mind/body states.

Literally people live mostly in a dream, with the occasional “wake up” moment where they feel very good. They have a peak experience. They don’t even now why.

It’s like everything is swept away and they have this clarity, like breathing the pure air high up in the mountains.

It doesn’t last long. Maybe a minute or two.

I had that too from when I was young — I noticed and filed it in my young mind.

Once I understood what stopping internal dialogue did, I saw that it was thinking in words that kaputed the peak experience state — often in seconds.

I also got a much better grasp of what the texts from Ancient India were saying. Enlightenment was very likely a “moment of light”, but one that you were able to keep a hold of... or at least you were aware it was there and how to get back to it.

Stopping internal dialogue impacts and is key to all aspects of life.

While the idea of “not thinking” would seem like a contradiction in terms — like if you don’t think, how do you get things done?

Well... let’s say you are working on your proposed career. You are able to use thought productively and in a focused manner.

You can decide to sit down and map everything out, such as the ways you will go about making your career happen. And you will also think left-field: look at how most people do it... then dream up a crazy way of going about it.

You then eco-check all of it. Basically, what would happen if so and so occurs... or what would happen if it doesn’t.

Because you know how to stop internal dialogue you can stay on track when you do think.

My maxim is: think when it is productive to do so; stop when it isn’t.

⟡◌◯⟡

CLIENT: What’s your take, Dok?

I’m 52.

Good career.
Good marriage.
House paid off.

On paper everything is fine.

But I wake up most mornings with a strange sense that my real life never happened.

Like I’ve somehow drifted onto the wrong railway line.

Not depressed.

Just disconnected.

What would you do?

DOK: What I’d do is take a whole day travelling on trains — literally. You live fairly close to me, South of Cambridge. So I’d head to the main railway at Cambridge, and I’d randomly decide whether to head north, south, west or east. Then buy a ticket.

Take a dice with you. Simply throw it. North is 1. South is 2, etc. Ignore 5 and 6 — if one of those comes up simply throw again.

Let’s say north comes up. You end up at Peterborough. Wander around the town a while. See what you come across. Does it somehow “speak” to you. This isn’t mysticism, it’s getting to know your subconscious mind, a free-flow of information between conscious and subconscious.

Throw the dice. You go to Retford. God knows what it’s like there. I’ve never been. Have a look around.

Next you end up at Nottingham. Same drill. See what’s what.

Keep going.

Let’s say you end up in Cheltenham. That’s a very nice town.

You head to a nice cafe and muse upon your travels.

Don’t overthink it.

Let the subconscious speak.

By now, it’s maybe 7pm. People have gone home from work.

It’s quiet and peaceful. Make your way back to the railway station, still in a dreamy state.

Once you’re on the train heading home, which might take a few changes, consider your day.

Ask yourself:

• Were you ever on the wrong train line?

• Or did some part of you know where you were going?

• The route was random. Yet somehow each place had something to offer. But maybe you had something to learn at every stop as you looked around given towns and cities.

Did it all come together as a kind of whole?

Certainly complex, and not the kind of thing your conscious mind can fathom, as it is typically “nuts and bolts”. But did your subconscous mind adapt to each stop — finding what you needed then and there?

Yes, it might have felt like you were “meant” to visit each town and city… but perhaps your subconscious was able to accommodate itself at each random stop.

Like: “Wherever I go I will find what inspires me, what will take me further along my path — no matter how random it is.”

Try it. Just one day.

And that day might get you on the right track… even though it is a random track.

⟡◯̷⟡

As Edward stood at the cobblestones of regret, he found he had no real regrets. Save for one poignant one — that he hadn’t seized the horns of life enough and had given in to timidity and a comfortable, albeit lacklustre, life.

But what would an exciting life be like? He thought to himself.

In the end, he concluded that all lives are much the same — from plumber to celebrity. The only real difference being how much money is at your disposal. The plumber fixes pipes and central heating, while the celebrity makes a fool of themselves in public.

Two sides of the same coin.

The only real rub being: have either truly embraced life?

Edward mused on this for a moment, then asked himself:

Have I toppled social conventions and said “be damned with it”?

Have I cast aside the shackles of belief and dogma, and beaten my own path?

Have I found the true me within and marched with the winds of time, merrily indulging in the vibrancy of simply being alive — like a glorious beast without a care in the world? ...(save for looking out for the next meal and a slurp of pure water from a mountain stream).

If not... and it was a definite “not”... it seemed like a waste of precious time on this Earth.

But it was by no means too late.

As the setting sun cast its amber rays upon the cobblestones of regret, Edward vowed to himself that he would start henceforth to actually live.

To be like a tiger of the night, following its path, being true to itself. Never deviating from what it truly is.

The question was: what did he really want?

Edward realised he had no clue.

In this first moment of potential emancipation he knew that he was perilously close to falling back into his old, moribund habits. To tumble back into conformity and lifelessness. To be cemented again into the staid drudgery of perpetual mundanity.

Then he realised that self-absorption and analysing was mere procrastination to put off living — until death itself came along to take his dulled-soul to the land of regretful despair, the purgatory of what could have been.

Yet he still didn’t know what to do.

Endless thinking was a dead-end street.

But what do you actually do if you don’t think?

“You act, my boy, you act,” came a voice, even though there was nobody around.

So Edward decided to act.

But nothing happened.

He took two steps and for the life of him still had no idea what to do.

At that moment, the voice came again:

“Simply walk. Feel the cool night air on your cheeks. Breathe in the lush scents of lavender and honeysuckle. Hear the sounds of the birds preparing for slumber. Live, my boy, live.”

So he did.

He walked and walked and relished the sensory stimuli — memories of his boyhood in Warminster flooded into his mind... the last time he’d truly felt the sensual ecstasy of life.

He then recalled how his life’s path had gone from there.

He’d completed his schooling with good grades, then muddled through university studying economics, feeling little zest for life due to blindly following conformity.

Then he went on to his career in the City. It was a plodding path, but he slowly managed to rise up the ranks.

The next thing was marriage and kids, and most likely, assuming the world didn’t end, there would be grandchildren.

Who could want for more?

Stability. A reasonable-enough relationship. Offspring.

The problem was some part of him did yearn for more.

It was then he remembered an incident a long time back where he could have gone off the rails.

In other words, the time he had a brainstorm.

One evening after work he went to the Coach & Horses in Soho, rather than head for the Tottenham Court Road underground station.

He didn’t just have one drink.

He drank himself silly.

When the landlord said, “Right you, you’ve had enough — fuck off”, Edward made his way — staggering mostly — through the night air of Soho. It was then a young woman sidled up to him... flowing red hair, jeans, and faded fake leather jacket — which basically went with her t-shirt that stated: “Eat The Rich Not Animals”.

Whether it was really the case or not, she exuded “wild and free,” which appealed to him a bit more than was appropriate. He wanted to seize her right then and there, take her to a back alley, and ravish her.

Breaking the spell, she said, “I bet you work in the City, don’t you? It’s you bankers that are bleeding the world dry.”

Rather than feel irked, he felt even more lust for her. But he knew that even if he even tried to kiss her, she’d likely punch him in the face and then where it hurts for good measure. And that might not be ideal given that he and his wife hadn’t yet conceived their first child. He most definitely didn’t want to upend his life plan.

He began to sober up.

He was about to say something like, “Well you scroungers on benefits should be grateful to us bankers as its down to our careful management of the economy that you lot can life the life of Riley.”

But he thought better of it.

Instead he said, “I don’t know what else to do. I’m stuck. It’s like my life is mapped out.”

The girl didn’t look impressed.

“Just leave. Give it all up. It’s easier than you think.”

She saw a momentary look of fear in his eyes.

Then Edward said, “I’d like to but I can’t. I have the mortgage to pay and besides my wife and I are thinking of having children.”

The girl smiled, then pulled him to her and kissed him passionately on the lips (he was quite handsome, albeit dull).

At that moment it felt like the whole cosmos was buzzing inside him.

The girl pulled him tightly to her, no doubt well aware of his engorged manhood pressing against her upper-thigh.

As to Edward, he felt truly alive, ravenous for the delights of the flesh and the sheer wild abandon — whether in a back alley or in the luxurious bedroom of a five star hotel... at that point he wouldn’t have cared which.

But then the girl pulled away.

Taking his hand, she said, “Come with me, give it all up. We live in a squat. No rent to pay. Let go. Just do it. Follow your wild heart and instincts. Live life.”

It was like she was a siren sent out to lure him in the urban sea of the Metropolis.

Right then and there he was overwhelmed by fear.

Profound fear.

The girl raised her eyebrow.

“It doesn’t come free you know — like a knee-trembler in an alley, no questions asked, and just guilt going home to your wife. That’s too easy. You have to pay the price. And it’s a bigger price tag than a luxury yacht. It’s the price of letting go. Following your heart’s desire. There’s no certainty. No guarantees. Nothing set in stone. You just let go.”

“I want to, but I just can’t,” Edward stuttered.

With that he backed away, saying, “I’m sorry...”

He then walked off into the night to catch the tube.

That one moment in time had flashed back to Edward. When was it? Fifteen years ago? He thought so.

Now he realised, all those years later, he was at the same point again.

He had to find a way to let go — to embrace the moment and act... otherwise he’d be standing at the cobblestones of regret, bitterly reprimanding himself for not stepping out when chances to do so were handed to him on a plate.

What would you do?

Think on that, dear reader, for it is perhaps the most important thing you could ever contemplate.

⟡◌◯⟡

The very name “Satan” tends to scare the living daylights out of people. Or at least those of a religious disposition.

But even people into new age ideas tend to be very wary of what they see as the “dark side.”

And then we have the conspiracy crowd railing against Satan, insisting “the elites are Satanists.”

They’re wildly wrong on that one.

In truth, Satan is a Promethean icon of defiance, reason, and liberty — even perhaps an emancipator of consciousness.

Not the kind of traits the elites — or ruling powers — like to encourage in populations.

The last thing they want is for people to be rebellious: they want them to be sheep.

The very idea of citizens taking up the Promethean brand and heralding Satan is an anathema to them.

It would mean people would be thinking for themselves and no longer lapping up the continual propaganda pumped out by the media on behalf of the ruling classes.

Ironically given how many people fear Satan, he didn’t play a major role in the various versions of the Bible. He was a mere bit-player.

But he got a staring role in the artistic and political movement of the 19th century — known as the Romantics. They reinterpreted Satan, shifting him from the traditional Christian embodiment of evil to a heroic rebel and symbol of emancipation.

All this was rooted in John Milton’s poetic work, Paradise Lost (1667). Despite being under the thrall of the Christian framework, he inadvertently — probably subconsciously — ended up creating one of literature’s greatest rebels.

With Milton’s pen, Satan became a symbol of defiance, heroic will, refusal to submit, and tragic self-awareness.

William Blake famously said Milton was: “...of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”

The nineteenth century Romantics took up Milton’s cudgel to challenge the prevailing religious tyranny and oppressive orthodoxy by adopting Satan as the figurehead for freedom.

Authors like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron portrayed Satan as resisting the tyranny of a powerful God (authority figure), making him a sympathetic character, one you could identify with.

On a political level, the movement used Satan as a metaphor for Western revolution and secularisation, linking the fallen angel to struggles against societal constraints, religious dogma and authoritarian structures.

But how many people today know this? Or even realise that the plight of workers, and the fight against oppression, once had Satan as its figurehead and motivational fuel?

Very few I would say.

Otherwise we wouldn’t have all the hordes online saying the elites are depraved Satanists — when in reality it was the figure of Satan that inspired the fight against exploitation in the first place... literally against the very elites themselves.

In terms of literary and artistic impact, works like Shelley’s Laon and Cynthna (1817), and Byron’s Cain (1821), emphasised Satan’s noble rebellion and moral complexity. And in the visual arts, sculptures like Jean-Jacques Feurchere’s Satan (c. 1835) embodied this era’s fascination with the melancholic, introspective anti-hero.

The Romantics were reacting against moribund institutions, rigid religion, mechanistic rationalism, and social conformity — along with how industrialism was reducing people to mere cogs in the machine.

They believed modernity was shrinking the human soul.

Even back then they saw that humanity itself was slowly being mechanised, and turned into robots.

Counteracting that, they saw imagination, creative intensity, and inner expansion as revolutionary forces... not just as artistic decoration.

Take Lord Byron. His Byronic alter-ego characters were saying: “I will define my own meaning — even if destroyed for it.”

Byron distrusted herd morality, pious conformity, and emotional domestication. He yearned for intensity of experience — a “consciousness burning brighter”.

His fellow author Percy Bysshe Shelley went even further in terms of liberation of consciousness. He genuinely believed that humanity could evolve psychologically and morally. Not just politically, which has never solved anything otherwise we wouldn’t be where we are today.

That’s key.

Underlying Shelley’s work is a kind of proto-evolutionary mysticism. A belief that consciousness itself could awaken people from fear and domination.

Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound could be seen as one of the great consciousness-liberation texts in English literature.

Prometheus becomes liberated intelligence, awakened will, and refusal of tyranny.

Shelley transforms the old myth into humanity freeing itself from inner and outer chains.

In his Laon and Cynthna / The Revolot of Islam we get political, erotic, and psychological liberation all rolled into one — along with spiritual emancipation.

Shelley saw authoritarian systems as operating both externally and internally. The tyrant exists in institutions, fear, and in conditioned consciousness.

Then there’s Lord Byron’s Cain which transforms Lucifer into the questioner and awakener. The being that forces consciousness beyond inherited dogma.

Cain’s anguish comes from awareness itself — from suffering, cosmic absurdity, and consciousness confronting death.

In other words Cain undergoes existential awakening.

And this sums up the rehabilitation of Satan by the Romantics. Once a walk-on role in the Bible to a figure that inspired movements to liberate oppressed peoples from the thraldom that grew out of the Industrial Revolution. Had the Church not been so dominant at the time of the Peasant’s Revolt, then Satan would have been the fuel behind Wat Tyler and his followers that took on the oppression of feudalism.

And today, given that we see encroaching totalitarianism in many parts of the world, including the West, then the old spirit of rebellion from the nineteenth century could be rekindled. Instead of being sheep gradually herded into technocratic enclosures, people might find the Promethean Fire, the spirit that lies within, rather than accepting their lot — which is exactly what the ruling classes want — and heed the cry of the Rebel Angel, Satan, and echoing Byron with: “I will define my own meaning — even if destroyed for it.”

Because in the end there is no choice. All else is authoritarian control. And anyone of true heart yearns to be free and to feel their “consciousness burning brighter” with the true flames of being alive, and not held back like the serfs of old.

⟡◌◯⟡

You need channels for the cash to manifest through.

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