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Friends,
“The hour is late. It is time for unwanted guests to leave.”
That’s a line from this episode’s guest, MITCH HOROWITZ, in his latest book, Esoterika: Formulas Against the False Self.

The book as I see it, is a book of ethics. And its central question is: how do you navigate who you are and what your ethics are when you touch the continuously transformative fires of spiritual pursuits?

In that sense, it is a book for anyone exploring their spirituality.

In it, Mitch traces his own inner (and outer) conflicts with spiritual maxims. Particular to Mitch are the conundrums of: How do I get what I want, yet retain my integrity? What do I do when there’s a conflict? And where does magic come in?

Along the way, Mitch showcases the influence of the esoteric work of G.I. Gurdjieff in his life, as well as thinkers and writers from the new thought movement.

I bring this aspect of Esoterika up to look at that remarkable meeting. These traditions – Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way, and the positive thinking and new thought teachings – meet in Mitch in a surprising way that gives him a new map for our territory.

My mentor, Lynn Margulis was fond of saying, ““In the arithmetic of life, One is always Many.”
Lynn was referring to way bacteria and other organisms create new forms and new species through symbioses, and how these symbioses live in all our biological histories.

But I also take this to be half of the spiritual statement of As Above So Below, and it’s one that I felt humming as I read Mitch’s book. The “so below” part; the symbiogensis of new species finds its inverse mirror in spiritual work.

As above: The same is true of esoteric paths handed to us. It appears as streams or currents emitting from the All. Or maybe more plainly stated, the white light, refracted, arrives to us as different colors.

Part of the ethics of spiritual work is the discernment of what are true and false spiritual paths, and then bringing together the true ones and rejecting the false ones. Recognizing that a conversation between, say, the esoteric christianity of Rudolf Steiner and the Taoist wizard-working of Wang LiPing may have. a lot to communicate to each other, and that that communication happens through adherents.

This is, in miniature, part of where Mitch and I begin our exploration on this episode. Though we work with very different traditions, they get to meet in our conversations in the same way Gurdjieff and new thought meet in his own books. Rather than causing friction, we work to make our own efforts befriend each other.

As a result, this episode is a call not just against the false self, but a signal to the truth in resonance. To find harmony with the other streams and currents and colors so that the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth may be clarified.

Maybe that sounds grandiose, but I do continue to believe in the power and radiating offer of conversation.

CH