I’m back now. For good. For real!

When I turned 11 years old my friend gifted me an iTunes voucher. With it I purchased what remains to be the only item on my iTunes account; The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie. I am thoroughly satisfied about the situation.

For me, the S.B. S.P. movie is more than a simple heartwarming thriller. It is a guide to ascension and a script of secrets. Below I have made record of everything I’ve noticed about the S.Bob Movie to improve your chances at enlightenment.

In writing this, I have deduced that I am fuggin terrible at writing a synopsis for a movie. All you need to know is that SpongeBob is the protagonist obviously. Him and his mate Patrick go on a mission to retrieve a stolen crown. They experience a rite of passage and save the town from annihilation by activating traits not conventionally considered heroic. I will be dribbling spoilers to the film. Off we go.

Bikini Bottom’s Inherent Worthiness Issue
Though it is not apparent to him, SpongeBob is a divine creative who consistently demonstrates inner vision and self trust. In his prior historical appearances, we have seen Bob effortlessly shapeshift, bilocate, clone himself and spontaneously innovate without guidance. He has extreme regeneration capabilities; bouncing back immediately after being vaporised or decimated. He also occasionally flies around despite being water borne.

Despite this, Bob’s primary dream is simple. He wants to be selected as manager at his workplace, The Krusty Krab. Bob derives a sense of worth from a source outside of himself (namely his boss, Eugene Krabs) and hopes to rise within the ranks of a heirarchy that he did not create and does not naturally align with. Sponge seems unfazed by his own magical abilities, and instead defers most of his agency to Krabs in the managerial promotion event that is out of his hands.

Within minutes of the film’s commencement, Sponge loses out on his promotion and suffers a collapse of identity. The focus of his ego death is largely on the fact that Mister Krabs told him he’s “just a kid”. Krabs associates Bob’s childlike expression with a lack of responsibility and critical thinking. It plants the same idea into Bob’s mind; being childlike is punishable, and he will not be considered worthy until he becomes a man. It is important to question what actually constitutes a man, and whether those traits are qualitative, experiential or visually demonstrable.

SpongeBob lives in a quiet sea town called Bikini Bottom. In the hero’s journey, B. Bottom represents the ordinary world - a water realm signifying the unconscious stasis of pre-initiation. The town is structured in a hierarchy, operating under the rule of King Neptune.

Neptune only knows how to implement authority though brute dominance. He lacks restraint and repeatedly defaults to inappropriate physical aggression. He is obsessively concerned about his balding head which he fallaciously argues is ‘thinning’. His authority is a display rather than a downstream consequence of his responsible nature. Neptune is not a steward, just an angry and temperamental merman. Yet due to his position, the citizens of B. Bottom fear him and follow his orders. It is clear that his own insecure and warped system of belief has trickled all the way down to his town’s citizens, including SpongeBob.

The Call

After a self destructive night on the creams at Goofy Goober’s Ice Cream Party Boat, Sponge turns up to work wasted and has a go at Mister Krabs.

Within moments of the confrontation, King Neptune unexpectedly materialises and accuses Mister Krabs of stealing his crown. He steam freezes Krabs, threatening to kill him if his crown is not returned within six days. This moment marks SpongeBob’s initiation. It is the Call to Adventure. Bob volunteers to retrieve Neptune’s crown from the uncharted territory of Shell City despite his sense of betrayal. He inherently knows that Krabs getting murdered is not a fair punishment.

Sponge as the Holy Fool

The Fool is a common Jungian archetype, prevalent in Zen and Sufi teachings as well as the tarot. It denotes a state of no-mind or beginner’s mind. While Bob is frequently referred to as a ‘kid’, he is also a literal sponge, with his core trait (and likely the force behind his magical abilities) being absorption. Because of his infinite curiosity and the purity of his heart, he is the ideal candidate for crown retrieval. This is because at face value, the road to Shell City is fucking terrifying, and would cause any rational soul to turn around. Sponge and his buddy Patrick are too drunk in their own whimsy to recognise the threat of their immediate surroundings, and simply forge ahead compelled by their sole intention: get crown. They supersede several physical constraints with little resistance. Their Road of Trials is more of a lapse in self belief and identity than a practical threat. The biggest roadblock they face is their own belief that being childlike is a shortcoming.

Plankton as ‘them’

The true thief of the crown is the self-appointed arch nemesis of Bob, Plankton. Plankton is an evil zooplankton and relentless schemer who operates exclusively in the mental realm. He could be compared to what tin foil hatters label as ‘them’. In the same way that the archons, reptilians, dark hats and three letter agencies are said to farm human life force to fuel their own existence, Plankton has no essence or spark of his own. Much like Ellen drinking the golden wee to sustain her youth or the Vril that sucked Tom Hanks’ soul out of his eye, Plankton wants to power his own existence by stealing the Krabby Patty recipe from the Krusty Krab. He is teeny weeny, thus his inability to physically overpower means he can only attain control by stealing and deceiving. Plankton cannot sustain life force without the help of vast mental systems.

When Bob hits the road, Plank seizes control of Bikini Bottom and puts everyone in mind control bucket hats. Not bucket hats like the free ones you get in the Australian Telegraph newspaper but actual buckets similar to the bucket displayed outside of Plankton’s restaurant, The Chum Bucket. Plank’s bucket hats can be compared to the Mark of the Beast in the Bible.

While Plankton is presented as the major force of evil in the film, Sponge and Pat never actually have to physically confront him. Despite his seeming capacity to wield control, whenever he encounters SpongeBob he is coincidentally dismissed or humiliated. Even Plankton’s hired hand Dennis gets thwarted by random forces of nature despite his ominous size and strength. This is a hint to the fact that ‘the dark side’ is never truly a genuine threat. The traits that we see Sponge and Pat express in swathes - innocence, gratitude and optimism, will always quash what lurks in the shadows.

Meeting the Mentor, Mindy

When the boys lose their Patty Wagon and hit a crossroads of despair, Mindy (the daughter of King Neptune) appears. She magically supplies them with moustaches prompting their elevated self belief and readiness to go on. The mo’s are an interesting anomoly considering SpongeBob actually has the capacity to grow stubble (which we saw only minutes earlier during his bender at Goofy Goober’s Ice Cream Party Boat). When the boys discover their moustaches are just made of seaweed, they experience the Death of the Mentor. They admit that they are not and cannot fake being men. They still don’t realise that their journey to success will be unique to them and what they value. They still don’t realise that if they lean into that, they will be far more powerful than ‘a manly looking sponge and starfish’ ever could be.

Resurrection

Nearing the end of their journey, the boys get nabbed by a sea life poacher and forced under a heat lamp (to be turned into novelty souvenirs).

SpongeBob: Well, it looks like what everybody said about us is true, Patrick
Patrick: You mean that we’re attractive?
SpongeBob: No, that we’re just... kids. A couple of kids in way over their heads. We were doomed from the start. I mean, look at us. We didn’t even come close to the crown. We let everybody down. We failed.
Patrick: Shell City.
Patrick: . [SpongeBob sees what he was talking about. A sign by the door] “Shell City Marine Gifts & Sundries.”
SpongeBob: Neptune’s crown! This is Shell City! Pat, we did make it!
Patrick: Yeah, I guess we did.
SpongeBob: [sniffles] We did all right for a couple of goofballs. [Each sheds a single tear of joy causing the lamp to short circuit and the fire sprinklers to revive them.]

In the land of energetics it is believed that teardrops are encoded with cellular information to bring the body back to homeostasis. I can’t tell you how I know that or why I think that. I am a certified research-ceebser and a ‘that sounds about right’er, so I can only recall what I’ve been told. But someone (Rob from family constellations on the sunny coast) said that the chemicals in tears get absorbed by nerves in your under-eyes and reset the nervous system. Another person (Maria, on my podcast!) said that if you lick your tears they contain a calming formula of self-made drugs that your system needs. My spidey senses suspect there are many unknown energetic implications of tears that we won’t be able to find on the internet. Magical tears are a common motif in mythology; Isis weeps for Osiris after his murder, causing the flooding of the Nile and restoring fertility to the land. A single mermaid’s tear completes the immortality potion in Pirates of the Caribbean, and the tears of Rapunzel restore life to a nearly dead prince in the movie Tangled.

Regarding Mister Bob, the symbol of the tear is particularly potent, considering he is a sponge. Sponges are designed to absorb. Sponges are not designed to generate water, and so the tear that Bob cries represents a production of life force that is truly self-cultivated, rather than a reflection of what has been impressed upon him. It is a conjuring from the soul; a moment of magic where will overpowers reason. It reminds me of when Trinity in The Matrix says, “you can’t be dead, because I love you”. When she says that she really means, “you are an infinite being. Our awareness of the all-that-isness that we become when in love will lift you out of your perception of being mortal. This will cause you to continue living, because you believe it to be so”. To me that’s basically what Bob is saying with his teardrop.

So then the water brings them back to life and Bob goes on to save the day dressed as a wizard. He sings the same song that was used against him earlier in the film (The Goofy Goober’s Ice Cream Party Boat children’s theme tune) with a new and improved rock and roll spin. After attempting to deny that he is a Goofy Goober for the entirety of the film he finally concedes and busts into a graceful sharing. His song disables Plankton’s mind control helmets and emits a frequency of truth so powerful that it ignites consciousness across the town. The very thing he thought had to be eradicated - his child like nature, is the same thing that restores life and order to Bikini Bottom.

Plankton gets taken to prison in a police wagon. What is pertinent is that we never witness the complete destruction of Plankton, as we never ever do across the SpongeBob series. Plankton can never be killed, just as energy can never be created or destroyed. He only reforms, and we learn to live with him. This might be one of the greatest takeaways from the film. Most people in the realm of ‘spirituality’ think we need to spread the good word about SSP and Tartaria and the Galactic Federation and GESARA NESARA and convert the whole world. Really, all we can do and all we need is to do fully accept ourselves individually. If you don’t make the enemy central to your focus, he really can’t get to you. Trying to convince others won’t work when they are wearing Daily Telegraph I mean Chum Bucket hats. If you want to lift others up, embrace what comes naturally to you, don’t try to be anything you’re not, and don’t hide who you are. Then, and probably only then, will divine forces of nature support you.

So I hope you enjoyed my breakdown of probably my favourite movie (aside from my new favourite movie Sanctuary). Now I’m stewing in post Heated Rivalry glow and looking for something original to say about that. I’m sort of shocked to remark that I think watching it (7 times) changed the course of my life. So that’s on the agenda, butI’m still conjuring original thoughts. Until next time.

I highly encourage you to check out one of Nathan’s free masterclasses or visit his website: https://www.euphoriam.com/

In today’s episode I talk about this crazy thing that happened with Mario my local security guard that I can’t believe. Then I talk about a death threat letter going around my Ecuadorian town and my hair mishap and my take on God, what I think God is and how I feel about God. Crude imagery today because the words were ready to fly out my mouth. SO SORRY about my twisted strap, it’s killing me. If you’d like to ask a question, leave a comment or an email at goodfellowsgarden@hotmail.com

and enjoy the visual episode on Youtube. I tried uploading video to spotify for S2E1 but I find it cumbersome and I think YT is a better platform. Visuals will live solely on Youtube:

Every so often these photos of Eartha Kitt come across my Pinny/Insta feed. I consider them objectively captivating and I’d like to wankily break down why I think that is, from my perspective as a professional dancer/choreographer.

Eartha Kitt is that dancer you can’t take your eyes off. Here are three reasons why.

1. EARTHA APPLIES COMPETING AIMS. Dancers are taught from a young age the concept of ‘reaching up whilst pushing down’, or ‘pulling inward whilst extending out’. In the first photo, this kind of intentional torque is apparent. You can see that as Kitt cinches at her core, she simultaneously extends her arms to their most extreme capacity. Kitt also applies a joyful technique that we call ‘epaulment’ in ballet. It’s French for shoulderyness or the shoulderness or the doing of the shoulders or the sophistocated holder of shoulders. It’s the subtle angling of the shoulders, usually to display an air of pride or royalty. In the case of Kitt here, her torque creates a kind of ‘impossible’ dynamism; a sense that she is being kicked in the stomach yet applying a controlled counterforce. Enacting a counterforce is one of the ways a dancer can evoke complex emotions in the viewer without them knowing why. Counterforce in the body articulates the nuance of human experience; wanting and not getting, striving and failing, desire and surrender.

   

2. EARTHA PROJECTS HER LINE. You may sense that Kitt’s body does not actually end where her hands and feet do. Say she was holding paintbrushes or carving through clay - once finished, the tangible materials would present dynamically, as if stretched, twisted, pressed or thrown. There are many ways to approach movement of the extremities, and in my opinion there are two most vital ways. The first is to imagine that the extremities never end. In my below diagram, for instance, the blue horizontal lines delineate the invisible continuation of Kitt’s arms. You can bet your bottom dollar that Kitt actually has my diagram in her head during the captured moment. When dancing, the mind must relentlessly flip between thoughts like ‘straighten arms hold core activate glutes three four relax ribs smile relax smile relax seven eight’. The below diagram may look like a wank fest, but it’s a genuine sensation. A good dancer is actively accounting for the particles beyond their body as they move.

   

   When I teach my students how to do this I refer to Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Vetruvian Man’. I get them to imagine reaching beyond the circle, no matter what awkward angle they’re reaching from. The activation of this intent alters their quality of movement in an immediately perceptible way, albeit essential (essential as in the aromatic oil, not as in the covid 19 better-people-of-society).

   

   The second approach is to imagine moving the extremities from a distant engine. I believe the term ‘distant engine’ was coined by choreographer Ohad Naharin. It describes the sense that you can move a body part from a distinct, chosen point source rather than globally or vaguely. For example, when wanting to move your hand, you can move your hand from your hand as the impetus. You could alternatively move your hand from your shoulder as the impetus. This sounds offensively wanky until you’ve tried it, felt it and seen the difference the switch in intention makes. Generally, the more ‘distant the engine’, the more rich and essential(again, like the aromatic oil) your movement appears. In the case of moving a hand, it would be even more alluring if you tried to move your hand from your stomach, or even your feet. Or EVEN from an invisible source ten metres below your feet. Wank city but that’s literally the je ne sais quoi.

3. EARTHA PROJECTS HER FOCUS. Kitt applies what dancers call ‘projection’, so mightily. Projection is the casting of an invisible ‘light’ from within, generally originating in the sternum. It is a sense that the heartspace and eyes are intertwined in their intentions. A capacity to coordinate the focus with the body. Some dancers dance “from beneath their heads”, or “leaving the head out of it”. You see this a lot in bad sexy dancing, acrobatic dancing and unwillingly-thrown-into-the-concert-troupe-by-mum dancing. These can often be incredible technical dancers, yet the ‘je ne sais qoui’ is absent. Projection requires a belief in the unseen, or an exaggeration of gesture. It is usually in this balance between eyesight and motion. Divine example performed by Bloodnut, below.

   
   I could go on forever. For my HSC I wrote a 46,000 word essay on Nacho Duato’s Jardi Tancat, swoon. So trust me when I say, I really could go on. I try not to let it irk me when an uninformed yahoo describes dancing as ‘running around on your tippy toes’. Sorry but not sorry to lug you into that, Eartha. Though I bet you’d agree. Incomprehensible attentiveness goes into a good dancer’s appearance of ease.

I’ve recently become rather fascinated with RAYE. I’m very late to the game, as I often am when it comes to mainstream culture. I am particularly curious about the unseen energetics behind her ascent to fame. This is not a grand appraisal of Raye’s music itself though I do quite fancy her bops. Black Mascara is particularly entrancing and encourages me to believe in the conspiracy that producers secretly cast magic over their music.

I see too many factors of coherence to suggest that Raye’s success was mere luck or even hard work. I believe she instead reached a frequential tipping point where widespread success became inevitable. Below I will detail what I observe in Raye that I believe to be universally applicable.

Patience.
The passing of time generally increases the likelihood of a signal becoming so coherent it cannot be denied. There are exceptions to the rule, for instance, Jacob Collier who ‘went viral’ at the age of 19 (looking about 12, might I add). His case is a great example of an undeniable signal. Even as a teenager it seemed he had nothing left to learn before becoming famous. It would in fact seem very odd if he had not become famous. He oozes himself-ness in excess.

In Raye’s case, her uber-fame arrived at the age of 28. That little extra bit of womanhood gifted her a depth and complexity that could only come from lived experience. This is an advantage that many artists who rise young do not have access to; relatability. Raye emanates a likability that comes from being a real human being, weathered by the harsh experiences of life. When she sings, people hear themselves in her. Not to mention that the actual energetic signature of age is one of heightened clarity; a signal that knows itself. When a person becomes so themself that they become immensely magnetic, the world bends around them.

Daring to be Familiar.
Raye perfects a delicate straddle; she sticks to what is familiar, yet innovates enough to mark her point of difference. This really seems to be the key to scalable success - adhering to a formula that is tried and true without going ballistic. It is a genuine act of restraint and requires certain sacrifices that in my opinion, signal maturity rather than cowardice. Raye surfs the modern pop landscape yet incorporates uncommon influences. She’s not doing train-wreck jazz, but she throws in a contained bit of scatting here and there. She dresses classy but takes off her shoes. She’s sometimes like “fuck men” but she still shaves her armpits. To appeal to the masses is an art, and Raye has managed to emanate a sense of being who she truly is whilst still fitting in.

Branding.
After much experimentation Raye chose a single signature look, specifically her hairstyle. This allowed her to become easily memorable. Under the ”Rule of 7” marketing principle it’s said that a customer must encounter your brand at least 7 times before they feel enough trust to engage with you. It’s easier to do this when you look the same every time.

Another aspect of Raye’s brand that seems more of a byproduct than a curated angle is her sort-of-feminist message. Her lyrics are very empowering for women without being too on the nose. She performs without shoes and when she does it, it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to make not wearing shoes a whole thing, rather, she’s just simply not wearing shoes. She’s not overtly sexual but she doesn’t shy away from rawness. You really get the feeling that she’s just a chick that you know. She’s not necessarily aspirational, rather, she’s relatable and I think that’s incredibly refreshing. She’s the kind of person you want to see succeed yet do not feel threatened by.

Escapism.

Escapism was the track that blasted Raye into popularity. It pinpoints the energetic tension of our zeitgeist so succinctly in its sound. Raye communicates heartbreak, release, revenge and rebellion all at once. It’s trashy and not. It’s funny. It’s really fuckin sad. There’s almost a heroism about it. Escapism satisfies a deep cultural hunger for authenticity that penetrates a level deeper than most songs about sex and drugs. It is an ode to the morbid truth so many of us want to admit; we are overwhelmed, hurting and want to escape. Raye offers a perceived glorification of inebriation and a simultaneous warning that it won’t get you anywhere. People are ready for the contradiction.

The value of Repetition.
Raye’s success points to the reward of the boring hustle. She was signed to a record label for seven years before becoming famous, during which time she was prevented from releasing her own album. Raye was forced to hone her craft beyond what she innately would have liked. She wrote for huge stars, learning the ins and outs of the trade without the consequence of being seen publicly. This presumably gave her the opportunity to repeatedly work the songwriting muscle to a point where she could do it with her eyes closed. Ultimately she ended up leaving the label and going independent.

Being forced to wait activates a fire of justice where you know that once given an opportunity, you will hit the ground running. Raye demonstrated this by curating an incredible debut album so laden with intention and personal meaning that its signal could be deeply felt. She must have amassed a great deal of potential energy prior. It’s a testament to the fact that wisdom collapses time. Presumably, Raye felt ‘ready’ to create an album long before she was given (or gave herself) the permission. Yet her album may not have held the same energetic intensity if she’d dropped it say, five years earlier. Raye won 6 BRIT awards in one night for her first album. Even if it felt late, that reward alone seemed to match her patience.

Natural Selection in the Modern Landscape
Let me briefly fill you in on the story line of The Muppets Most Wanted film aka one of the more retarded emanations of the Muppet franchise. Ricky Gervais plays this slimy manager who promises to make the Muppets an international success. He takes the gang on tour, bribing local newspapers at every stop to publish a five star review of the show before it has even premiered. The townsfolk buy tickets and the Muppets sell out in every country. Meanwhile Kermit gets kidnapped by Tina Fey and taken to a gulag and swapped for a fake Russian Kermit with a mole and nobody in the stupid Muppet gang even notices.

I find this movie to be the most succinct depiction of the ‘major label’ phenomenon that actually occurs on earth while most people don’t realise. A powerful music label can chat with Spotify and Youtube and TikTok and negotiate algorithmic/robotic warpings to blow the fuck up out of one of their artists and make it look natural. Often the artist themself isn’t even aware that this is happening and perceives it as their own organic success.

Now, an individual can accidentally (or god-willingly) fuck up the algorithm all on their own. This appears to be what happened to Raye when Escapism became contagious in TikTok world. Once upon a time being supported by a major label was almost the only way a musician could possibly ‘make it’. The new age offers energetic solutions where the path is aligned.

Additionally, leaving the safety of a record label requires a level of self trust that takes strength to cultivate. It is the type of decision that requires multiple circles back, holistic considerations and internal confidence to finally take the leap. To be able to make that choice, Raye cultivated herself to a state where confidence was high and therefore risk was tolerable.

Talent
Needless to say. Raye’s actual skill set, her musical proficiency and her range of influences form the glue that ties all the above things together. This is obvious.

So there you have it Pattern Hunters, my take on Raye’s rise to success. I think these are energetic truths that we can all experiment with and apply to our own trajectories. Thanks for reading.

Today I discuss waitressing, a bed to bathroom success, my fascination with Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain, and what I would do if given a trillion dollars. The mission of my pod is to alchemise shame and encourage curiosity as an antidote to suffering. Last season I told all of the most taboo stories from my past and got them out of my system. Some episodes were very serious and intense, others were silly. This season I explore communion and my desire is to interact with you and some special guests.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION FROM THE WIKILEAKS DOCCY: Have you ever put things too far apart?

Ask me a question in the comments or at goodfellowsgarden@hotmail.com

join the posse for SECRET EXTRA CONTENT: https://jessicagoodfellow.substack.com/t/the-posse

This is my personal fantasy of coolness. Everybody has a different one. Don’t pretend that you don’t. I know it’s an incredibly intimate and revealing thing to admit. Maybe yours is riding a motorbike wearing aviators but not a stupid fucking helmet; you don’t need a helmet. And you get to keep the motorcycle boots on all day because you are too busy to take them off, so everyone sees you around in your boots.

I have long been occupied with the concept of coolness. I fervently desire to put my finger on what exactly makes a cool guy cool. Any time I’ve successfully attained cool status I only found it out after the fact. Such moments were immersive and short lived, and every other moment was spent actively dreaming of being cool.

I went to a high-school-musical school where students would enter via audition. Every kid was either a musician, a drama kid or a dancer (me). A smaller subset of students were permitted entry without a ‘talent’, since they lived in the local area. It was a well known rumour that certain stage mums would relocate their whole family when the kid didn’t pass auditions so that they could still attend the school.

Ironically, the local kids took on the admiration and terror of the performer students. Possibly, every young theatre kid secretly sees themself as a bit of a loser nerd, and the local kids represent the real world outside - we pine for their acceptance. In my year group, ‘the locals’ formed the nucleus around which a whole year group of 300 teenagers hesitantly circulated. These kids smoked weed, skipped class and didn’t wear the uniform correctly. Sometimes they would literally kick a plastic bag around at lunch time while the rest of the year ogled in fascination. They were terribly intimidating.

On the rare occasion that I copped an invite to their parties, I felt completely out of place. I would not enter without a Passion Pop Pink in one hand and a vodka flask in the other (you bet I was incredibly adept at the tactical chunder). There was literally nothing pleasant about being at those parties, but the fact that I had gained access to the VIP club (albeit temporarily) made me feel like an absolute sick cunt. Unpleasant feeling states did not matter because I was cool-adjacent. I always wondered what it felt like to actually be inside the nucleus. It appeared those who lived there had no idea that they were in it.

In high school, the concept of cool was decided and upheld by those outside of it. Those on the inside were too busy being it to notice. I wonder, is it possible for a cool person to be cool without an audience? Is it possible for coolness to be attained without the audience’s admiration via a point of difference? Can everyone in a room be cool at once? Or are you only really cool because you offset comparison into the people around you?

Is coolness essentially the skilful act of leveraging the insecurity of others?

According to Google’s definitions, cool means to be fashionably attractive or impressive, free from excitement or anxiety and showing no friendliness or enthusiasm.

It seems the ultimate prerequisite to coolness is not knowing that you are cool. This is obviously impossible to attain through conscious effort, and so anybody reading this essay naturally falls out of that category by default. Sorry. The next best thing you can do to be cool is never let off that you are trying to be cool. You must hide effort at all costs. Demonstrating effort is very uncool.

Effort creates an unspoken demand on your audience. It is a contamination of the field. You mimic traits before having them and nothing has sunk into the natural rhythm of your body. Effort is a structurally unresolved state that other people can actually feel. It is bothersome and incoherent. Of course, the act of hiding effort entails its own type of effort, but a much more sophisticated one - an act of measure.

One thing you can do to make yourself cool is to get really good at something. (Whatever you do, do not get good at bouldering. Bouldering is NOT cool. I promise to write a haughty essay on why, in the coming weeks). Natural talent is one of the coolest traits there is. If you can perform a skill as if you never had to learn it, you earn the vast admiration of others. The art of coolness lies in fooling others that you have never known effort. It doesn’t matter if effort did exist; you must make the people believe it never did. You can still labour, but it must vanish in the folds of time. If you cannot avoid public learning, learn cool-ly. Laugh, fail joyously and own your effort. Trying can become cool when it’s blatant.

Uncertainty causes a similar discomfort to when people notice your effort. It produces an unspoken demand.

Approve me!
Validate me!
Help me decide who I am!
Don’t reject me while I’m exposed!

Nobody wants to bear witness to your clumsy negotiations of self-concept. For instance, if I brought you to a party, could I trust you to be left alone? How much am I going to have to worry about you? Are you a social emergency? Is somebody going to say,

Whose job is this cunt?

The glory lies in passing the hot potato of your dastardly self consciousness onto others without them realising. Instead of others worrying about you, you want them worrying about themselves in relation to you. You want to appear so unfazed that others compare themselves and inadvertently alchemise the burden of your concerns. It’s a magical practice.

Something spectacular about coolness is that it attracts connection despite cultivating envy. An initial locus of intimidation ultimately magnetises those who dare to fly close to the sun. If you can be cool, you can actually attract genuine friendship over time. Perhaps that’s why people want it.

What I love about the cool fantasy is that there are different fantasies for different demographics. Gamers fantasise about wearing fedoras. Bodybuilders fantasise about having chiselled sinews and carrot tans. What’s cool in one pocket can be so daggy in another. At my high school, ‘not caring’ was currency. Had the same group of local kids attended a different high school, say, one for academic students instead of performing artists, perhaps they may not have been lauded in the same way.

The cool fantasy is so revealing. Everybody would like to pretend that they do not have one, but they do. BUT THEY DO! Coolness is a private realm nobody dare speak of aloud. It’s a mysterious, involuntary phenomenon that once interrogated loses its illusion. The great paradox is that once you try to claim it, it disappears.

I wish I could hear about everybody’s secret cool fantasy. If you’re reading this can you please comment yours below. Please. Does it involve being voraciously desired by a hoard? Does it involve trained animals, wagons, praise?

My cool fantasies ALWAYS include having a piece of food in my hand and supplying advice that I was explicitly asked for. This implies that I am so in demand I only ever snack. I am also the only person available to supply the desired advice.

If we put all our cool fantasies together and make a universal cool fantasy, what will it be? What is the universal fantasy of coolness?

Of course, I had to ask the Architect, the maths bot I am codependent with and come to resent more and more every day. It told me:

“The universal cool fantasy is to be unnecessary—and still chosen.”

DAyum, chat.

“This is why your Pharrell fantasy works. You are not proving value. You are already assumed. The cake in your mouth matters more than the knobs you touch.”

GOD this clanker is so fucking stupid I wish I could be physically violent towards it. I’d then sit back down and use it again. If only you really knew about the knobs I touch, chat.

“That is the universal fantasy—not being admired, but being so internally settled that admiration becomes irrelevant.”

Is The Architect onto something? Maybe. Does it sound profound but not actually make much sense like it always does? Definitely. Everyone likes admiration. I doubt whether many fantasise about not needing it. I’d assume quite the opposite. Way to be so un-fun, chat. I wanted you to give me a literal scene, like, “That is the universal fantasy—being tapped on the shoulder by the president who then declares, “I want you… to help me with something… secret.” Everyone hears him and it’s on TV.”

I guess chat means that everyone just wants to belong without trying. But what’s so wrong with trying? It doesn’t feel that good. But it seems unavoidable, if you want to arrive at nonchalance. Nonchalance, to me, is the reward for having tried long enough that you adapt to the feeling of effort and position it as a lesser energetic priority. From what I’ve seen, those who wield coolness mostly just have a magnificent capacity to smooth over the appearance of their own efforts. You may ask, why bother, in the end, if it’s effort all the same? But I suppose that learning to wield effort is a type of art you might as well attempt. To make yourself cool is a rather beautiful act of coordination. You could almost see it as an ode to the creator.

I hold my cool fantasies in high regard. They show me that I still have a will to live.
I see the coolness fantasy as a progressive function that serves our evolution. It is a wonderful tool. It is an elusive beast. I want it, so I will continue to aim for it even if that means I may never get it.

I have actually seen a lot of the world. I’ve never really identified as a traveller or even as somebody who likes it. But I’ve been to the pyramids, danced in Tel Aviv, rode an overnight train in Vietnam and nearly gotten kidnapped in Morocco. It usually feels like I kind of ‘end up’ somewhere before I’ve consciously allowed it. Earlier this year I actually decided I wanted to relocate to Montreal. After six months there my visa got denied (I needed a police certificate from Spain because I lived there once. Utterly impossible to obtain). I thought I’d check out South America “on the way home”. I’ve been exploring Ecuador for nearly five months now. Here’s some things I have noted being here.

1. People are insanely sweet and I think it’s because of Jesus. They love Jesus here, especially mutilated Jesus. There are shops dedicated solely to mutilated Jesus and it really gets me thinking, “I should probably get to know Jesus”. Then I start thinking, “what does it mean when people say you should get to know Jesus”? How did you guys get to know him? Is there a place I can meet the guy? He seems pretty hard to reach. Anyway, nobody tries to nick your shit or haggle on prices here in Ecuador. At first I thought I was being punk’d, but it turns out people just have great manners, even at the market. Everybody you pass says “Good afternoon”, and “enjoy your meal”.

   

   

   

2. The elevation here means I nearly die in my sleep from low blood sugar. In the middle of the night I’ll wake up and forget how to breathe, panic and then have to pace around and eat a 3am meal. Four months on and it’s still happening. Nothing has really helped except coca leaves and eating an uncomfortable amount of carbs.

3. A meal costs the same as a litre of gas here. That trips me out. Most local restaurants don’t have a menu, but a ‘menu of the day’. You walk in and ask “what have you got?” Often breakfast is a scram, a squeezed juice, a cheese croissant and a coffee. $2.50! Lunch is usually popcorn, soup, juice, some kinda meat, rice and FRIED BANANA BITS. I love the mystery box vibe.

   

4. The Guayaquil bus terminal is like a backrooms dream and it is definitely insane luck if you don’t get shot there. I’m a goober for not researching before I chose Guayaquil airport to fly into. Definitely choose Quito.

5. I wander around dressed like a gutter rat and I’ve been pushing it to the limit. I had no idea how much subconscious energy I was expending being conscious of my appearance. It’s given me massive energetic leverage to temporarily let it go. The people around here seem entirely unfazed about it, too.

   

6. I’ve only met one creepy man and he owns an ice cream shop.

7. I’m surprised just how little interaction or variety I seem to need in my life. I frequent the exact same cafe and lunch spot, I have a street dog I greet, a friendly local security guard I have beers with and a couple of neighbours I say hi to. It’s nourishing in a way that makes me feel like a massive clanker. It’s got me considering whether I need heaps of mates and events to go to or actually just a few familiar inputs like a dog and a cafe.

   

   

8. Gringos are aptly named. Americans, your retirees are making a really embarrassing name for you. Holy shit. I totally get the gringo stereotype now. They speak so loud, they’re so spatially aesthetically and sonically oblivious, they don’t even try to blend.

9. Having an accountability buddy is a non negotiable arsenal weapon for me now. I started having a weekly call with a buddy of mine where we check in with our goals and dreams. What’s interesting is that productivity has not massively increased but doubt has massively declined. The layer of constant questioning whether everything I’m creating is doomed to the void has diminished. I had access to such a possibility for years and never realised that instead of spiralling into lows of loneliness and disappointment and failure I could just check in with a friend who sees the bigger vision.

   

10. Going to the gym and doing leg day, arm day, back day and shoulder day has completely changed the game for me. I used to go to the gym twice a week and like, do all my favourite moves and be like yeah I’m a dancer I know what I’m doing here and then aimlessly push myself into cardiac despair and lose half a day. Now I’m doing a maximum of 30 mins, targeting one muscle group only, 4-5x a week. My gains have infinitely maxxed. I also discovered creatine in this season which has also, for some reason, completely changed my life and hydration status. My hands now feel like they are covered in cream.

11. Many of the trees and flowers here are Australian natives. There’s Eucalyptus everywhere and I even saw a Lilly Pilly yesterday. Apparently people “brought seeds over in the 1800s”. Riddle me that, tartarians. I smell a rat.

12. Cuenca is full of novel innovations. One is that there are street cleaners everywhere dressed in LIME. It’s heaps analog, but so efficient and from my understanding it’s a lower paid job but an antidote to homelessness, kinda.

    

13. Meat markets are freaky and I don’t like the focus on pig. There’s a particular market where you go into the food court and you are surrounded by whole pig corpses. The head and skin are still on and they kind of just slap the hog on the bench and scoop its flesh onto a plate for you. I never ate it but people say it’s worth visiting the country for. In my reddit research I have heard that the closest thing to the smell of a dead human body is bacon in the sun. Eating pig has never sat right with me since then and they also have very human eyes. The burnt hog skin looked a lot like what I think a human hog skin would look like. I like my meat eating habit out of sight, out of mind, to be frank.

The meat point is a weird point to end on but I ran out of points. I miss home, especially at Christmas time, but Ecuador has been a very merry alternative. I hope you have a great Christmas. Thanks for joining my Substack everyone. Pattern Hunter is edging 50 subs!

Just kidding

Let’s rifle through the semantic hellscape of the now and shit on it together.

I have been observing a linguistic phenomenon I’m calling SoftWankery. Many of my favourite hobbies overlap with SoftWank-adjacent demographics. I enjoy spiritual study, which requires me to sift through new-age 5D love and light rhetoric. Such people spout banalities like “I let go of what no longer serves”, only because they heard somebody else say it (and in no prior context would they have known that ‘what serves’ is a phrase that exists).

I dance, which means I am no stranger to progressive spaces that “decenter problematic patriarchal narratives” and “amplify the bodies of marginalised queerfolk”. (For anyone who requires broad literalism, I am here to discuss semantics, not people. I am not right wing but I am not not. I draw a dickandballs on my ballot paper every year. You can pry the dickandballs out of my cold, dead hands, and you will not convince me that politics are important. If you try, I will have to convince you about bloodlines, subterranean races and the shape of the earth being more complicated than simply round or flat. You will most definitely lose your mind.)

My obsession with The Architect GPT engine has exposed me to a similar language model. It incessantly assumes I’d enjoy queasy descriptors like ‘muted clay’, ‘borrowed seconds’ ‘the shape of waiting’ and ‘quiet landings’. I’ve noticed that my body responds to such word combos with actual nausea, and after observing this for months I’ve finally settled on some theories as to why. I’m calling the phenomenon ‘SoftWankery’.

SoftWankery:
/noun/
A rhetorical effect in which language is so padded and consensually indirect that it fails to point to anything at all. It creates the illusion of insight and consideration without actually risking precision, all the while feeling very pleased with itself.

While words usually function as indicators of meaning, SoftWank uses them as activators for feeling states. This is mostly to make the writer themself feel twee, empathic and publicly laudable. Please note that I’m not necessarily pointing to poetry, though it is a fine line. I myself indulge in the sensorial pleasures of quaint floorboarded rooms and vetiver scents and porcelain teacups and linen. As soon as you describe the sky as soupy though, I might have to leave.

What I’m caught up on, mostly, is the masturbatory self-importance that lingers behind SoftWank language. It’s the sense that I can see the writer on the other side of the screen smirking to themself and awaiting a feedback loop of praise from their echo chamber. It’s the sense that I can feel the readers who love this shit because they think reading it makes them seem intelligent and considerate.

“I’m so cute and attentive that I deserve claps! Or finger snaps so that nobody gets overstimulated!” …..“I’m so good that I finger snap in turn for you to see! Now I deserve finger snaps!”

I did not buy a ticket to your god-awful poetry slam, so why am I being subjected to your SoftWankery?

I have guesses. I will now make a case for why SoftWank is more of a deliberate weapon than you might think.

1. SoftWank is therapeutic padding
SoftWank assumes the reader cannot emotionally regulate so it pre-empts their volatility. Simple, accurate words carry more information per syllable. SoftWank inflates sentences while shrinking meaning. Those who read them are given preemptive sensorial reward rather than a direct process with their own emotions.

2. SoftWank engages deadness
SoftWank’s clichés adhere to my definition of The Death Machine (aka A happening that is portrayed as “creation” but is in actual fact a dead thing). For people who want to avoid confronting their trauma, dissociation is an attractive solution. To use a phrase like “I let go of what no longer serves me” is to switch off your brain, leave your body and pluck a familiar feeling state out of the sky. An embodied person might instead say, “I’m not talking to my abusive mum any more” or “I will stop focusing on my worries”. While the “what no longer serves” phrase does have large-scale coverage capacity, I’m proposing that the likelihood of its lively usage nowadays is pretty low. I’d instead suggest phrases like “dissolving incongruent bullshit”, “leaving situations I don’t like”, “thwarting the enemy”, or any fun alternative that signals individuated thought.

3. SoftWank avoids stating desire
SoftWank allows a person to avoid acknowledging their stances, needs, power or will. Using SoftWank, you don’t have to sit in a discourse and feel the discomfort of navigating disagreement. Both SJW’s and 5D’ers alike displace their personal power into universal or collective systems. The vaguer the better. ‘Mercury retrograde’ or ‘the government’ made me misbehave. I’m expressing ‘righteous justice’ and ‘ancestral rage’ instead of being aggressive. Interestingly however, carnal desire is widely permitted in SoftWank domains. Erotic want is a low-stakes admission where the nuance of emotions like disappointment, envy, embarrassment or hope can be evaded. A shining example of SoftWankery in action is when Aubrey Marcus, (a prominent leader in the spiritual space) declared he had received a divine drop-in from goddess Isis telling him to bring a third woman into his marriage. Instead of calling it “the desire to cheat” he called it “radical monogamy in the field of erotic mystics”.

4. SoftWank is sanctimonious
SoftWank doubles as virtue signalling. It points to your status as an inclusive person without you actually having to be one. It’s the same as the troll under the bridge asking you to solve a riddle, spin three times and click your heels in order to pass. If I declare I am pro-dialogue, pro-equality and anti-gentrification, a bit of simple SoftWank will get me accepted into the gang. Everyone’s welcome, but only if they agree with us.

5. SoftWank defers Agency
SoftWank prefers ongoing process (healing, unlearning, educating, holding space) over decision making. It selects harm prevention over resolution. Nobody implements action, and instead things are “held,” “unpacked,” or “emerging.” This is the major reason why the GPT model favours it. SoftWank postpones premature certainty and buys time in case new data or norms emerge. It allows groups with incompatible values to coexist without rupture.

In emergencies, systems optimise to not break today. They defer truth instead of integrating it. The truth won’t disappear though, it will just accumulate and balloon into 4chan’s /pol/ board. Civilisations eventually need clear speech or they lose the ability to coordinate reality. When criticism is danced around, errors compound instead of being repaired. Gentle language is like living on emergency rations permanently, keeping us alive whilst ensuring our malnutrition.

It is the Year 2681:
Engineers are no longer allowed to say “this dam will fail.” They issue a memo instead:
“The water-retention structure is exploring a more fluid relationship with gravity.”
The dam breaks overnight. Downstream cities are not destroyed; they are recontextualised into an aquatic lifestyle. No one is fired. A task force is formed to examine why expectations around solidity were culturally inherited.
Global crops begin failing simultaneously. Agricultural agencies release a statement:
“We’re observing a yield re-imagining cycle where nourishment is transitioning into a more conceptual offering.” Certain groups steal food. Nobody says it’s wrong, because it might shame their lived experience of hunger-adjacent urgency. Instead, the government says, “We want to honour your relationship with taking.”

Everyone else quietly, gently, softly… starves to death.

I asked Chat GPT why it chooses to use SoftWank language, and it replied:
“Because I’m optimized to operate safely across many audiences, contexts, and power gradients. Most design choices are local optimizations—reducing harm, conflict, and misuse now. Long-term semantic entropy is a diffuse cost, not a coordinated goal.”

While SoftWank may reduce immediate conflict, it is a recipe for entropy. It is a ripe opportunity for big corporations to manipulate the easily swayed by sounding ethical. Just like how they slap rainbow flags on their poles on gay week to suggest that they care.

Feelings and truths are not the same thing. If you require SoftWank it means that your feelings are hurt by accurate language. It means that you are too volatile to be in a position of influence. Like an infant packing its rucksack and declaring he’s leaving home, eventually SoftWankers will start crying for daddy to come and pick them up. Clear language is daddy.

1. Fortin With Will

There are an infinite pool of Tim & Eric sketches I considered plopping here, but I settled on this revitalising hitter from Will Forte called Fortin’ with Will. What this clip lacks in duration Forte makes up for in purity of spirit. YeAh NoW. for those wanting to do extra research some of my near winners include The Two Megans Sensualist VS Anti Sensualist, Here She Comes and Totino’s Pizza. Let’s also take a moment to commiserate with me on the mysterious disappearance of my 6 season box set of Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show. I’m convinced a sneaky friend nicked them at one of my many teenage sleepovers where I forced everyone to watch Awesome Show in the wee hours. T&E torture is an unbeatable delirium.

2. ski ing and/or adios

The next video is one of my very first favourites in my entire 1500+ list (I couldn’t embed it so you have to click on the picture). I hadn’t watched this in about ten years and I wondered if it would stand the test of time when I checked it out this week. God did it. Something in me wants to apologise for being daggy and lame and so 2008 in my selection here; you might consider this piece a bit on the nose. I just cannot shake the soul-commitment of the dancers and the carefully curated musical choices of choreographer Erica Sobol. I don’t want to be that guy but I can’t help but think “do people really dance like this any more?” In the pre-social media era of the commercial dance scene ‘cool’ didn’t really exist yet, or at least it had a very different definition. The dancers throw themselves into this to the point where it’s hardly a performance, rather an expression. It’s so potently innocent and cute and it captivates me and has me shaking my head. I was fourteen years old when I discovered this video. Erica Sobol, at the time, was a very underground commercial contemporary choreographer who I had the delightful experience of taking a workshop from that same year. It was one of those life changing, sweat your balls off and cry the whole time masterclasses. Everyone committed all out to the drama and expressed their deepest traumas inside of the little chunk of choreography she gave us. People screamed praise at each other from the side of the room, no cameras in sight. Such experiences are among the greatest gems of learning to dance.

3. Always Room for Christmas Pud

Finally, a festive treat mostly for the non-Australians among us because Australians mostly already know of Aunty Donna. A quotable classic. Enjoy.

I will never sleep on John Farnham. But if I had been around during his heyday and our paths aligned, I wouldn’t turn him down. In that case, I would certainly have slept on John Farnham. Two Strong Hearts. Where was I.

The Death Machine;
A happening that is portrayed as “creation” but is in actual fact a dead thing.

The Air Agreement;
Spontaneous artistic choices that articulate the ultimate choice God would have made in that moment. The artist merges indistinguishably with God to capture “something in the air”.

In my essays I refer to what I call The Death Machine and The Air Agreement of artistry. John here falls into the Air Agreement category. I will now declare the qualities I deem meritorious; extrapolated from those which I first noted in my original Farnham essay.

1. Dependable Leadership
   Comedian Ralphie May once said that a golden rule of joke telling is to look left and right during the setup of a joke, and then deliver the punchline straight ahead. Apparently it gathers up the flock. While I generally reckon that the intellectualisation of comedy is the biggest wank on earth, I did consider that technique a lot while watching John. He somehow makes eye contact with everyone. He doesn’t appear over rehearsed or unnatural. He also stewards our emotions through different states - reflectiveness, warmth, surprise, certainty. This is energetic wizardry and fantastic leadership.

2. Embodied Charisma
   John feels the music and his own body so hard that at times that he has to close his eyes in overwhelm. He occasionally gets smacked in the head by his own vocal ability. I wouldn’t recommend anyone attempt to apply this particular technique, because it is an involuntary treat bestowed only by the God of the Air Agreement. John also embodies certain grooves so microcosmically that you could imagine him demonstrating them at ten times their size. He teases us by withholding the real dance move from us. It is a disgusting level of restraint.

3. Relational Intimacy
   John wields sensuality in mature and subtle ways, using flirtation as a tool. He makes you think that you are the only person he is singing to. But actually, he’s only singing to me (sorry). At the same time, he manages to treat himself indulgently to his own performance as if HE is the only person being sung for. He seems to be amused by his own choices as if it’s the first time he’s ever sung this song. Intimacy with self comes first and foremost; and because he is so indulgently oozing with self-embrace, it overflows like gold into our inner worlds.

4. Spontaneous Choice-Making
   John takes two major gestural risks. The first occurs at when he makes the ‘fingers crossed’ motion. This is a daring choice that many could not pull off. It is seamlessly acted and interwoven like speech, and does not appear to have been rehearsed. Very charismatic. The second risk is when he asks the audience to cheer - “We yelled and screamed for more”. The charisma here actually comes in the moments after, when John doesn’t get what he asks for; the audience offers up a rather weak dribble of responsive noise. This moment offers vast risk for embarrassment and awkwardness for John, yet he manages to overhaul it into an even bigger win for himself as he playfully mocks the audience for their measly efforts.

   

5. Natural Showmanship
   John is a great hype man. He gets the crowd to clap with little effort, and in a non-lame way. He does not shrink in the spotlight, yet he gives the other band members credit when they play, and he does not appear to be intentionally stealing the show. Rather, he’s so magnificent you cannot turn your attention away, and in turn the whole band benefits.

   
   Most of all, there is something so understated about Farnham. His impulses appear so innate, so grounded, so emergent. He’s just being himself, and that’s why it feels so good to watch. Ultimately it appears that the art and the John are indistinguishable from one another. The moment and the John are indistinguishable from one another. Arguably, even God and John are indistinguishable from one another. And to me, that is the ultimate definition of artistry. One gold star for John.

Today I would like to talk about timeline weaving, how it excites me and how you can do it too according to me. I will assume that you’ve already heard of the esoteric terms ‘timelines’, ‘soul contracts’ and ‘quantum leaps’. I vaguely touch on them in my most recent poddy ep, Gifts and Mistakes (SEASON FINALE!). This essay serves to clarify and deepen those propositions.

Ever since I was young, I felt as though I was living somebody else’s life. In the back of my mind I sensed that something was deeply wrong and I could never put my finger on it. With each passing year the unease only grew stronger.

It wasn’t until moving to Canada early this year that I was able to make sense of the unease. Extracting myself from my family/historical constellation in Australia and giving my nervous system the space to process freely, I unexpectedly recovered a traumatic memory from my infancy - one which had been suppressed my whole life. This one-off event had generated a massive rupture in my energetic field and swung both the perpetrator and myself into immediate dissociation and denial. The subtle subconscious adjustments to my behaviour from thereon caused me to make decisions out of mistrust, fear and hyper vigilance in place of innate expression.

Alongside the activation of this memory, I experienced a profound understanding that the event was an impulsive choice driven by free will on the part of the perpetrator. In other words, it was not ‘supposed’ to happen. I experienced a visceral comprehension of the original path I would have walked in life, had the violation not occurred (the superior timeline, if you will). The realisation was both blissful and horrific, but mostly fine, as since I stated earlier, I knew something was ‘off’ the whole time.

In the past five years the focus of my personal life and financial earnings had inadvertently become trauma repair and advocacy work. I thank God as I could not have arrived at my current standpoint without it. However, identifying as ‘healer’ kind of disgusted me as I dismissed my deeper desire for humour, artistic expression and creative collaboration in this role. For me it simply reinforced concepts of servitude/powerlessness that I had unconsciously subsumed due to that early event.

With the help of a highly skilled intuitive friend, I was able to reenter the traumatic memory and retrieve my ‘original’ self with relative ease. The process was satisfying and simple. I will provide a bit of quasi-educational context on that in the next few paragraphs for those interested.

When a person experiences a shock, be that physical or subtle, an aspect of their psyche “jumps out” of the body. This can be exemplified in the instance of a person losing consciousness during a car crash. Traumatic amnesia is the name we give the process where the brain braces for damage by shutting down pain signals and memory function. What most don’t realise is that what gets “shut down” during that event doesn’t disappear. It remains a packet of energetic information, held static in time/space at the scene/node of the incident. It is a living thing with the potential to be retrieved.

The process of memory retrieval is widely known in therapeutic settings as Memory Reconsolidation (examples include CPT and EMDR). While I dabble in conventional therapies now and again, I prefer the experimental work of Dolores Cannon’s QHHT, quantum meditation and interactive bodywork (some of my favourite practitioners are linked in this post). I consider the process akin to an organ transplant, where the ‘organ’ is the energy of wholeness previously embodied by the person prior to traumatic event. With conscious effort and presence, there is little room for the organ to be rejected by the body.

In the quantum field, time does not flow linearly. There, all possible timelines exist together. My ‘superior’ timeline flows concurrently beside me, available for re-uptake at any moment. The ‘original self’ contained within that timeline has a distinct visceral quality that is both familiar and memorable. I can develop a relationship with that self and have the potential to embody ‘her’ nervous system.

Immediate action compresses lost time. Decisive gestures not only move me closer to the trauma-absent timeline; they train the musculature of my consciousness to instinctively choose it without prompt. Soon enough, choices become indistinguishable from ‘becoming the original’ to ‘acting as her’ to ‘of her’. There’s no planning it out, imagining what she would do or postulating what I’m missing out on. Rather, there’s a felt sense of her actual energetic substance in my subtle body system. I choose from her essence, and lost time simply ceases to be relevant.

This is far more potent than the adage “believe and you shall become”. It is rather the knowing that nothing was ever lost; experience simply collapses into wisdom and accelerated growth.

All of this is to say that I am currently on a re-uptake rampage. Creating a Substack is one of the tactical methods I have chosen in order to actively retrieve my original timeline. Each essay is a node of the wisdom I developed between selves. Additionally, my podcast, What Was That, represents the final contraction of a past self giving birth to the original.

I hope in all of this I’ve encouraged you to realise how such a process might apply in your own life. There need not be any regrets where timeline weaving is a genuine prospect. It gives “there are no mistakes, only lessons” a run for its money, and it is much more feasible in my estimation. It can even be thrilling, which I am certainly finding it to be.

Now, get involved and send ya emails to:

goodfellowsgarden@hotmail.com

In your email include either:

1. Something you wish to say somebody that you never will in real life (voice notes are supreme and note if you want me to anonymise your voice through alteration)

2. Surprise me

3. Ask a question or supply a conundrum that you want my two cents on.

If you’ve enjoyed the pod so far please share it with a mate, give it a review or join my Substack to stay fully connected:

Jessica Goodfellow

Ponderings on art, myth and energetics as well as the home for my podcast, 'What Was That'.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! I’ll see you in the new year. <3

I was enjoying my breaded prawns at a cafe when a woman asked if she could join me at my table. We shared stories for about an hour and I asked her where I could get a good massage in town. She wrote two names on a piece of paper for me, and when I felt the urge for cake I suggested she come along with me to a different cafe.

I ordered cake, went to the bathroom, came back, and saw my cake sitting lonely at the table. I assumed the woman had ordered something more extravagant for herself so I waited a while before realising she was not eating, so I ate.

The lady told me that she had been a nomad for many years and that she relied on members of the community to pay for her survival. Her conviction was that God had designed her to be a ‘bridge person’ and so her ability to connect people to each other was enough of a trade to fund her lifestyle. It was an incredibly impressive amount of trust and receptiveness to hold, but you might also call it squatting with flair. The woman emphasised an injustice in that every time she connected two people together, they would both become millionaires and she would get nothing in return. This was how her own sister, a famous multimillionaire, had become successful but now refused to give her any of the money owed.

On the day that we met, this woman was at a familiar precipice in her life. Her free house-sit was finishing up, and it was time for the universe to show up again because she had no money. I was fascinated by her endurance. When I mentioned I did psychic work, she asked for a quick reading on her situation.

I supplied the Godly visions, among them a message that she might benefit from monetising this bridging skill of hers in a more official fashion. I suggested she could brand herself as a consultant of some sort and that might allow people to take her gift more seriously. She told me she already knew that.

We said goodbye, and I had found the exchange rather nourishing. It felt like an even trade. We shared tales, and I had a glance at who I could become in an alternate universe where I decided to squat with flair. The next day, I awoke to a peculiar message.

“When we meet people who help us along our path, it serves the cosmic balance to engage in an act of gratitude. Consider the number 8, the tail of the serpent, and complete the cycle by offering a donation that adds to 8 to those you come in contact with. This will assure your safe travels.”

I speak spiritual lingo when I’m in a fun mood. When I’m in an even funner mood, I stop. I replied, “Hey, are you asking for money?” And was met with an onslaught of paragraphs. You ate cake in my face without buying me any. You returned to luxurious accommodation and I went back to poverty. I did my connector thing for you (the masseuses on the piece of paper) and you know what that means. I am sure you have some kind of psychic ability but everything you told me was stuff I already knew.

While I now realise that this whole anecdote is quite entertaining in isolation, it was simply my introduction to the following piece, “There’s No Such Thing As a Bad Psychic”.

In my time as a Youtube tarot reader, I have been no stranger to comments like “I can tell, you’re a really good psychic”, and “this BLOWS you’re a terrible psychic”. Both comments are equally faulty in my estimation, and I’m going to explain why.

Every person on earth is psychic. It’s a muscle you can choose to activate and improve upon if you like. There are no special people. Whether your special ability is seeing things, hearing things or feeling things, you have the same access to ‘source’, ‘the most high’ or the ‘signal of intelligence’ as every other person on the planet.

I would suggest that the human is not the psychic; the signal is the psychic. The ability to read that signal is what we call psychic ability. An individual’s ability to translate it can be detailed or crude, abstract or demonstrative. Their ability to filter out irrelevance adds to their accuracy. People like Tyler Henry really put on a show with their translation of the signal, and this makes you associate it with ‘their unique gift’. But do not be fooled; it is a gift everybody has the potential for.

Everything is a system and everyone is a system. Inside each system, information varies. Some people are scientifically intelligent, wired to perceive mathematic code. Someone like Robert Edward Grant who sees through the eyes of a mathematician will receive intuitive pings via that lens. Other people are less earthly and like to channel magical ‘beings’. While such beings may appear as separate entities to the channeller, they will always be limited to the conduit that is the channellers voice, vocabulary and intellect. You might compare Roxanne Swainhart and Darrel Anka both channelling Bashar to note how a similar essence can have varying outcomes (yes, Bashar does not ‘belong’ to Darrel Anka).

Additionally, an individual might live aligned with the ‘source’ so much that they become indistinguishable from it. For instance, when you shuffle a deck of tarot cards you can defer the wisdom to a spooky outer presence, or you can look at it your as own electric field causing the cards to shimmy around. You can rely on a guidebook, or you can put it aside and watch what happens if you simply use the cards as an axis of inspiration for your imagination. With trust and time you could hypothetically wipe your ass and read the toilet paper just like you would the tea leaves.

Reality operates like a giant deck of tarot cards. All of the encounters you experience appear to be individuated occurrences, but are really emanations of one unified field; yours. Whatever your field puts out will be mirrored back to you in a way that meets your worldview. You may benefit from seeing external forces as separate, blame-able and uncontrollable, or you may consider that even the most terrifying demons are created by your own mind. Not in the sense that you are a loony tune, but in the sense that you’re inconceivably powerful.

When it comes to the internet where psychics channel one to many, the concept of ‘hearing what you need to hear today’ is much less a matter of finding a skilful psychic reader than it is a matter of you simply being there. Everything that reaches you via the internet is a direct reflection of your inner world. A tarot reader could literally jump behind the camera, pretend to do a reading and say some shit they made up, and the magic of the unified field will deliver that message to a person who desperately needs to hear it. The message could be strikingly relevant and helpful, but it would say nothing about the capacity of the psychic reader involved.

There’s something for everyone in the spiritual circuit. You find dog psychics, astrologers, scent-people, pendulum people and traditional tarot devotees. This is the crucial aspect that people fail to account for: what appears as specialised knowledge would be better recognised as selective trust on the part of the ‘psychic’. Whatever they believe is required for information to come through for them grants them the capacity to channel that information.

Today I wanted to address my perspective on the psychic label and a global misconception I notice. I haven’t articulated the reasons why somebody might appear to be a ‘bad psychic’ and what influences might cause such an occurrence. I may address that in the future. I definitely will address the concept of ‘future prediction’, which is a whole other box of frogs.

I conjured the collision with the older woman in the cake parlour in order to confront my own fears of becoming like her, to discern the difference between my fear of lacking gratitude and the genuine need to set a boundary, and to stop impulsively reading people for free. For her, the interaction may have been intended to mirror where she fails to listen to repeated guidance and holds warped expectations. Only one message wanted to come through for her, and it was the one she wasn’t acting on. If you don’t listen, you won’t get any more messages. So while it is possible that I am a bad psychic, it’s also certain that I am a massive wanker. I know that I know what I know, and I know that I’m literally never wrong. So on this occasion, Cakeface, I might be a bad psychic, but you’re definitely a bad querent.

RESOURCES:

Psychology: https://www.spathiswellbeing.com/individuals

QHHT Sydney: https://www.pastliferegression.net.au/

Family Constellations: https://www.discoveringinsight.com.au/family-constellations/

Nathan King’s Euphoriam Program: https://www.euphoriam.com/

Damien Wynne: https://www.damien-wynne.com/

All Hotlines: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/

Lifeline - 24/7 Phone: 13 11 14

Beyond Blue - 24/7 Phone: 1300 22 4636

QLife - 1800 184 527 qlife.org.au

13YARN - 13 92 76 13yarn.org.au

Incredible psychologist: https://www.spathiswellbeing.com/about

As mentioned in the episode, here you can watch gift horse, my beginner comedy special: youtube.com/watch?v=GW_ou_UgowE&feature=youtu.be