The way the world seems to come in again and again in our time is like a wave to beat us down. For some of us the wave is unbearable. In fact it is a killing wave – But for many of us, most of us actually, the wave is knocking us about. We see the swells and currents from different vantage points, and the tides at different times. Perhaps the flood started for you back in 2001, witnessing the shattering of a sense of global security; or you’re seeing water in your dreams again and again in ways that impacts your psyche; or you feel you’re drowning in responsibilities or washed out by the exhaustion of debts.
What so many share is a recognition of the unceasingness of world intensities, coming ashore and pulling away again.
The resul? We can feel pulled in our lives away from who we really are. Like when you leave your spot on the beach and walk into the ocean, only to look back a bit later and see you’ve been carried so far from the spot at which you entered.
I’ve definitely been going through this for a long time. Of course there are things in my life that I am happy about, but so much of who I am is being transformed by the waters of my life, and the life we all share. Maybe you’ve sensed it in my voice on the show?
So that leave me – like it leaves anyone else, trying to figure out what to do.
Questions arise:
How does my self-development match my spiritual development?
How do I develop with the other in mind?
How do I meet another person in a way that actually assists my self development?
And finally, how does all that lead to my spiritual development helping the world?
I talk about all of this with spiritual teacher and writer, LISA ROMERO.
Lisa starts with a question* with her own: How can I give my will to your thinking?
This is a personal, spiritual, and worldly episode. It uses events in my own life to discover how how turning point in our lives, and our relationships, can offer opportunities to help the world’s development… if we work through them properly.
MORE ON LISA: Lisa has a YouTube channel that features her in conversation with younger people on the spiritual path. It’s called the ASTRAL ARC, and she is just about to discuss the virtues Lisa is offers courses on the festivals throughout the year. If you’d like to check into some of Lisa’s other books, they’re all on here site, where she also has a short audio clip detailing the books and her work. Lisa has also been on the Duncan Trussell Family Hour, my pal Duncan Trussell’s podcast.
*Lisa opens the episode with a question, and concludes the episode with a poem, which I’ve also included here:
DIG HERE THE ANGEL SAID by St. John of the Cross
She caught me off guard when my soul said to me, “Have we met?”
So surprised I was to hear her speak like that I chuckled.
She began to sing a tale: “There was once a hardworking man who used to worry so much because he could not feed and clothe his children and wife the way he wanted.
There was a beautiful little chapel in the village where the man lived and one day while he was praying, an angel appeared.
The angel said, ‘Follow me.’ And he did out into an ancient forest. ‘Now dig here,’ the angel said. And the man felt strength in his limbs he had not known since youth and with just his bare hands he dug deep and found a lost treasure, and his relationship with the world changed.’
Finding our soul’s beauty does that–give us tremendous freedom from worry.
“Dig here,” the angel said– “in your soul, in your soul.”
Friends, In this deeply personal episode, my friend – journalist, artist, and organizer, Una Mullally – and I look at how proximity to death and collapse in our own lives can renew our commitment to and understanding of truth. It’s especially important now, with the sense of claustrophobia and the real world deaths happening on the screens in front of our eyes. How do we see the image of death, feel the presence of violence against others, and bring that into a project of renewal?
This is, in a way, a partner episode to my upcoming event with Una, Srećko Horvat, and Mark O’Connell, THEBEGINNINGISNEARwhich is an immersive discussion on apocalypse and renewal happening in Dublin AND online. The in-person tickets are basically dold out, but you can still by streaming tickets and be a part of it, as well as watch a recording after if you’d like.
MORE ON UNA Una has a weekly, challenging, column in the Irish Times. Some of Una’a other great appearances on AEWCH include AEWCH 230 on how to stop catastrophizing, and AEWCH 192 which featured us speaking about my novel Hawk Mountain and fiction more broadly.
A BOOK YOU SHOULD READ in conjunction with this episode is Susan Sontag’s excellent Regarding the Pain of Others.
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR: An immersive discussion on apocalypse and renewal Dean Arts Studio, Dublin 2, Thursday March 28th, 7pm – 9.30pm + Streaming Online €15-€35 (pay what you can afford, ticket includes a complimentary refreshment) + ONLINE STREAMING TICKETS
Feel like everything is collapsing and decaying? What would it feel like to consider everything is about to begin and flourish?
Join me and a host of AEWCH guests – Croatian philosopher and organizerSrećko Horvat, journalist and activist Una Mullally, and Mark O’Connell, for a unique opportunity to dissect and create new pathways amidst both global turmoil and solidarity-building!
War, and the nihilism of over-consumption, are in a fever-pitch struggle with visions of peace, contentment, and connection. In THE BEGINNING IS NEAR, our four speakers will explore the polar opposites of disaster and renewal, inviting the audience into the discussion to create a broader vision for Dublin, Ireland, and the world at large.
THE BEGINNING IS NEAR marks Srećko Horvat’s first speaking engagement in Ireland. His knowledge in philosophy, school-building, and political organizing, conjures a spirit of resonance, which reveals what feels like ‘the end’, across so many fronts, can also mark a real beginning.
TICKETS are available on a sliding scale: pay what you can at €15, €25, or €35. Space is limited, buy your tickets early! Complimentary beverages provided.
LIVESTREAM TICKETS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE to watch the event remotely for a flat fee of €15 (about $16.50 USD), and comes with limited-time access to a recording of the event. When you buy a livestream ticket, you will receive the link 12-24 hours ahead of the event via the email you supply at point of purchase.
All ticket holders will receive access to a recording of the event for a limited time.
Join us at the edge of death and birth, truth and love.
Friends, After a small podcasting break, AEWCH is back with a (sort of?) new ep, a crossover episode with a new and excellent podcast, THE BREAKUP THEORY, hosted by SHULI BRANSON. When Shuli and I spoke a few weeks ago about Palestine on their podcast, I was so in excited about where we went. I also wanted to link people up with The Breakup Theory. So I’m crossposting that episode here. I’ve never done this before (and probably never will again) – but this was a special occasion, an episode about politics and spirituality that encounters the challenges of our moment.
Shuli and I last spoke on AEWCH228, about how to see the world through the lens of anarchism. Obviously, a lot has happened in the world since then, and so the conditions and directions of the conversation are new here.
The episode starts by touching on a deep cut of my show, AEWCH 9 – which I later reposted as AEWCH 132: HOW TO BREAK UP WITH THE STATE. It’s an episode that iinspired some of Shuli’s thinking (and maybe the name of their podcast?). The primary question being: Why do we stay in relationships with states that obviously don’t have our interests in mind. Then it goes… well, lots of places.
Some questions that come up:
Should we be practicing good politics or anti-politics?
How are we baited by elections?
Is nonviolence effective?
What does a spiritual politics that doesn’t turn into theocracy look like?
Are a non-abstract politics possible?
How does the state trick us into discussing and envisioning things on its terms?
Why do we wait for tragedy to take action?
What are everyday practices of resilience?
How do limits in love relationships teach us about politics?
What do we do with the fact that people have different desires?
This was such an expansive conversation. I love talking with Shuli, and I hope you love listening!
AND: It receives no money from sponsors or advertisements, it is entirely listener supported. Does this podcast offer you inspiration? If so, do support the show on patreon. Give a one-time annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib to connect to and give economic life to something you find value in. Thank you. Also, please do subscribe to the show, give it a 5 star rating and warm review on Apple Podcasts + buy my novel Hawk Mountain and give it 5 star rating and a positive review on Goodreads!
Friends, I’ve been thinking so much about work lately, and that’s shown up on episodes about podcasting and so-called “content creation.” But what about the work of a lifetime: spiritual work?
What IS spiritual work, anyway?
I know it’s not simply spiritual practice – that’s just one form spiritual work takes.
And I know it’s not just living life, in spite of the fact that when I say my spiritual work is important to me, people say things like “my spiritual work is being in nature,” or “my spiritual work is hanging out with my family.”
I obviously don’t want to condemn the experience of spiritual presence and love that arises from those sorts of life experiences. I just know that’s not exactly what is meant.
But how do I not make enemies out of distinctions when I say that those things are different, or when I say things like, “I want to do my spiritual work, but I’m working at my job all the time?”
The flipside? How do I not banish important distinction when I say, “everything is spiritual”?
On top of all of that, there’s the anti-work stance that is so urgently needed. How can we rightly do “spiritual work” when we need to end work al together?
I thought to consider this, I should talk with someone whose job is spirituality – or religion, in this case – Jonah Evans is a priest and lenker in the Christian Community – which religious renewal developed by and inspired by Rudolf Steiner.
He’s also been on the show once before, on AEWCH 220, when we talked about why anyone would engage with esoteric christianity. Together with Patrick Kennedy, he co-hosts one of my favorite podcasts, The Light In Every Thing. And he helps edit the series of Rudolf Steiner lectures offered by the Community, and offers workshops and conference around the world.
I hope you enjoy this deep discussion on a challenging topic!
MORE ON JONAH Jonah has a YouTube channel, Living with Christ, with lots of video lectures. Here’s an interview with Jonah about The Christian Community and his role. Jonah’s podcast with Patrick Kennedy has a patreon which offers early access to each episode and other benefits. And one of the best ways to understand some of what Jonah and that is to see if there’s a service near youand then attend one. Nothing will be expected of you, no one will try to get you “in” to the group. You’ll just encounter what all encounter: the baseline of the service is always the same; the Act of Consecration of Man. And then some talking afterward. Finally, here’s a recent interview with Jonah about Steiner vs Jung.
Friends, Every day, it feels like world circumstances aren’t just hopeless, but impossible. Tactics for resistance don’t seem to work, new horrors appear, and the ability to access a calm and engaged life can even seem, at times, to be beyond us. How do we approach the impossibility of changing the world?
What we need is something that generates new directions and pathways, new visions and ideas, new strategies and tactics. And before we do that, we need to access the spiritual fact that these directions, visions, and strategies are available to us in the first place.
This won’t be the sort of work we’re used to, because we are pushing into the new. Working through the impossible is like walking through water when what’s needed is to walk on it.
But there is a moment when we find ourselves rising above the reflective line of surface and it will seem baffling to us that we hadn’t known all along how to do it.
We will have to locate, for instance, the promise located in our old tactics. We will have locate the usefulness in the absurd. We will have to find connections where before we saw oppositions, distinctions where once we saw enemies.
One of the best people I know to talk with about all of this is philosopher and political theorist, Michael Hardt. His latest book is The Subversive Seventies – a plain language, easy-to-read assessment of the innovation of creative and resistance movements in the 1970s.
If you hear that there’s a book on the 70s and think it’s just historical, that it won’t feel enlivening to read, or that it will feel like romanticization of another time, disregard that misleading thought. Teh Subversive Seventies is such a powerful and moving book that will restore your confidence in the ability of people to have new visions of the world and new ways of eroding obstructive power. It is, in fact, one of the most vital and vitalizing books I’ve read in a long time.
As Michael says, in many ways, the seventies were ahead of us. Why? Because the aspirations were huge. Not just resistance, but innovation. Not just stopping war, but generating togetherness. Not just replacing those in power, but generating completely new structures to live with. It certainly connects to the spiritual principle that to truly fight evil, it is not enough to directly battle with it. Rather, to fight evil, we must create good. From gay liberation, black liberation movements, and antinuclear movements in the US, to the Autonomia movement in Italy, the Sanrizuka struggle in Japan, and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. It is a picture of a world in a liberation moment and project. The picture has all the details of differing tactics and huge ideas, as well as connections and inspirations.
Michael was last on the show on AEWCH 120 previous books with Antonio Negri are perhaps better known. They are themselves absolutely liberating. They are Empire, and its follow ups: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, which was followed by Commonwealth, and finally, Assembly.Few books about political theory come as close to a spiritual picture of revolutions, liberations, pictures of power, and pictures of how meaningful life can thrive in the midst of challenges.
On this episode we try to meet some of the challenges of today. Why do movements only really gain massive traction when they are seen to be responding to oppressive violence? Do protests work? What can we learn in their failures? Can we act in pivotal moments, or are we always too late by the time we see the problem?
This episode presents a conversation that tries to grapple. Failing, striving, succeeding, failing again. It echoes, in a sense what Michael points out again and again about movements. That movements create concepts – we’re not just acting, but we’re changing how we view the world as we act, and even how we can view the world.
I’m so happy to share this conversation with you, maybe it bring inspiration to think and feel and do differently.
Friends, My one-on-one full mentorship program for highly motivated creative people with spiritual, organizational, and life projects, ∴WAVEFORM∵ , is officially retiring this year.
It’s an opportunity to work with me in completely individualized way on your big life projects, your creative projects, your goal to develop your public presence, your coaching practices, your spiritual and financial and artistic goals, and more. And to do it all while staying in your integrity.
∴WAVEFORM∵ WILL AMPLIFY/CREATE/ORIENT AND ALIGN your efforts in a way that RESONATES WITH OTHERS, IN OUR NEWLY FORMING WORLD, over the course of six live online one-on-one meetings + remote contact + resources and guidance.
∴WAVEFORM∵ is real mentorship, not pre-packaged life coaching.
These sessions will change the direction, outcome and reception of your efforts. The many forms my work has taken have given me a potent, unique perspective on achievement, resonance, and presence. You will receive every benefit of my two decades of public-facing and award-winning work in media, literature, education, lecturing, public speaking, podcasting, writing, and intellectual endeavors.
This offering is ONLY available for entry NOW until DECEMBER 15. You don’t have to start until January, and you can purchase the mentoshoip as a gift, but you must do so before the protal collapses on December 15.
Since ∴WAVEFORM∵ offers sustained individual attention from me, only five slots are available.
IN THIS MENTORSHIP PROCESS WE WILL:
Meet one-one-one for 90 minutes in a SPECTRAL CONTENT MEETING to find the contours of your unrealized goal and vision; and to map out the form your actions need to take over the next two months to meet that goal and vision. It’s different for every project.
Meet one-one-one for a READJUSTMENT MEETING to get your life organized to support your goals.
Meet one-on-one forthree, hourlong PHASE MEETINGS to tune in to your progression and to course correct as we go, reseting the rhythm and form where needed
Guide you through each layer of your project through as it intensifies and comes into being
Develop exercises, new directions, refinements, in Conner’s parallel work: four FREQUENCY SESSIONS where Conner will be focusing on your project on his own, spending time contemplating on you and your efforts to develop exercises and side quests that resonate with your work
Identify your strengths (apparent talents) and weaknesses (talents waiting to be redeemed) in achieving your goal
AMPLIFIERS for your work: resources curated along the way specifically for you and the form you’re working with
Keep in touch throughout the two month period, with UNLIMITED EMAIL ACCESS guaranteeing response from Conner within 72 hours.
Recalibrate your old oscillations and habits to turn them into helpers for your new forms
FEE: The fee is $2950 for patreon patrons and $3100, for everyone else. To sign up, go to my store. If the sales button is still up, there is still a spot. You get:
1x 1-on-1 Spectral Content Meeting (90 minutes)
1x Readjustment Meeting (1 hr)
3x 1-on-1 Phase Meetings (50 minutes each)
4x Frequency Sessions (45 minutes Conner solo work between meetings)
Email access communication within 72 hours
CONNER, CAN YOU TELL ME MORE? THIS SOUNDS A LITTLE VAGUE AND COSTS MORE THAN YOUR OTHER OFFERINGS Yes, read the FAQ below, but the reason it may sound vague is because ∴WAVEFORM∵ is mentorship for all artistic, financial, spiritual, public intellectual, and personal projects. You’ll be receiving individualized attention. Because your project is unique, the form the process and resonance takes will be unique to you.
FAQ
What kind of projects/spiritual directives/etc can I do? Am I too much of a beginner to sign up for this? (Flipside: Am I too accomplished?)
The “right” starting point is wherever you decide to take this step from. The process is for you wherever you’re at. I’ve been hired by New York Times bestselling authors to help them through blocks on their new books. I’ve done spiritual coaching for a cybersecurity worker who suddenly started having unexplainable experiences; I’ve helped an unpublished poet become a screenwriter now working on Netflix series. I’ve advised financial institutions on how to incorporate spiritual principles into their business practices. I’ve coached playwrights on writing their first (now published!) novels and guided undergraduates in university literature courses. Because I have a huge range of experience to draw from, ∴WAVEFORM∵ is for everyone. Aside from hosting a successful podcast, publishing a critically acclaimed and award-nominated novel, nonfiction, and poetry; I’ve also had my own web series, set up dozens of live events, lectured at universities and organizations around the world, given online courses, and curated events on the national level. I’ve made hundreds of media appearances on TV, podcasts, movies, radio, and web shows. I’ve also been one of the only (the only?) adult performer to navigate the passage from adult performance to popular non-adult endeavors that were not in some way adult- or sexuality-centered. Your project could be to start a coaching practice, to secure public attention for endeavors already underway, to create a spiritual community, to shift into a new artistic or professional field, to start a podcast, to make a certain amount of money, or to create your own pathway for occult development. Whatever your form is, I will offer everything I’ve learned that suits the path you’re on.
Can I sign up for some other time?
No. I’m offering these spots right now. We don’t have to start until January, but the sign up portal collapses on December 15, and this offering will never appear again.
Am I guaranteed success in my creative project/goals/etc if I sign up?
Let me put it this way: Committing to spending time with me and up to $3100 on something is an investment in taking your project and goal seriously enough to accomplish it. Your success depends, of course, on you and your determination more than anything else. What I can guarantee is that this process will amplify every aspect of your creative work, from process to final product, from your feeling in creating to where it all ends up in the world when you’re done.
Should I apply even if I can’t really afford it?
Discomfort is not, in general, separable from progression. In signing up for ∴WAVEFORM∵, it’s important that you be able to see things differently, and that includes your own willingness to engage with discomfort and fear to move forward. I don’t recommend that you sign up if your commitment will totally blow your nervous system apart. But if you’re hesitant yet still reading this, you probably already know that your feelings don’t always accurately reflect the reality of your abilities. Since you’re here, reading these lines, you are likely to have the resources and a core consciousness and confidence that signing up is possible for you now.
What happens if I sign up and don’t like it? Can I get a refund or drop out?
No client-initiated refunds are available. But I have no interest in artificially trying to help people who would have better teachers. If for some reason your project doesn’t seem to fall into my realm of experience, I will let you know immediately and refund you your full amount minus Square fees. That said, I’ve never had any client in decades of experience want to leave in the middle of a process because they did not find our work together valuable.
Are there any payment plans?
There is an option for one payment by December 10, and the second payment on December 15. Please email me for this option at againsteveryonewithconnerhabib at gmail dot com.
Can I buy this as a gift for someone? How does that work?
Yes, and I and clients have had great experiences offering one-on-one work as a gift. Just sign up and send me an email at againsteveryonewithconnerhabib at gmail dot com AT THE TIME OF SIGN UP with how you’d like me to deliver the gift and when.
Any unanswered questions?
Please send to againsteveryonewithconnerhabib at gmail.com
Now. Let’s Amplify/Create/Orient in this new plane together. XO CH
AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB IS EXCLUSIVELY FUNDED BY LISTENERS. There is no other money coming into this podcast, since advertisementsfromsponsorsdon‘tfitwiththemissionofAEWCH.
Friends, In times of obvious schisms between human beings and their structures can stir up the opportunities that only frenetic and urgent intensity can reveal. In these times, we can see that there have always been many pathways available to us, that we were stuck, that we can be there for each other and dissolve obstruction. We can even redeem evil and turn it into the willing service of good.
It is with this sense of possibility that I turn to the occult and esotericism for direction.
The problem is, what areesoteric and occult development, anyway? Are they the same a self development, self help, abundance culture, using magick?
Or are spiritual development and self development quite different? And if so, are they therefore pointing us to two different worlds, two different sorts of being? And where do they touch?
Because spirituality is beyond desire, when we constrain it to desire – and that includes the spiritual paths that include the desire to get rid of desire – we limit the scope of spiritual landscape, the spiritual world, and spiritual truth. Which means we will develop differently.
To discuss this, I asked DUNCANBARFORDand ALANCHAPMANfor conversation and contemplation. Duncan and Alan are perhaps best known for the chronicle of their efforts to achieve enlightenment through magical traditions, TheBaptist‘sHeadCompendium:MagickasaPathtoEnlightenment.They now cohost the excellent podcast on magick and spirituality, WORPFM.AndDuncan appeared on AEWCH 219 to talk about the misuses of magick, which we touch on again in this episode.
I so enjoyed this clarifying, peace-filled conversation, and I hope you will too.
Duncan and I met in London at legendary occult bookstore Treadwells to have a conversation in front of an audience about my debut novel, Hawk Mountain. A transcript of that conversation will be available exclusively for patrons.
Advertisements from sponsors don’t fit with the mission of this podcast. So I ask listeners if they’d like to support the show by sharing what they can via patreon. The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib. You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel Hawk Mountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends, Celebrating the release of my novel Hawk Mountain in paperback, I’ve been talking with creators of my favorite genre, HORROR. Now to conclude the series, I’ve reposted my episode from October of 2022 on the spiritual life of horror. It’s a fitting conclusion to the series, summarizing my contemplation on the genre and what it offers from my spiritual perspective. And it has lots of recommendations for books and films you might not know.
Previous episodes in the series were: AEWCH 235 with C.J. Leede and Paul Tremblay, AEWCH 234 with John Langan and Sophie White, AEWCH 233 featured writers Nathan Ballingrud and Sara Gran, and the first was AEWCH 232, with cosmic horror writer and scholar Matt Cardin.
This series of episodes was such an enriching journey through horror and its offerings, thank you for joining me on it.
Advertisements from sponsors don’t fit with the mission of this podcast. So I ask listeners if they’d like to support the show by sharing what they can via patreon. The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to Patreon.com/connerhabib. You can also subscribe to the show and give it a 5-Star writing on Apple Podcasts, as well as buy my novel Hawk Mountain.
When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.
Friends, We are in dire need of real spiritual paths to guide us through the challenges we’re facing now. But in the flood of spiritual information, it is difficult to sort out which ones are true and which ones are false.
Furthermore, there are plenty of spiritual influencers making content that amounts to little more than “spiritual” dross cast over “edgy” political views. These influencers pretend that the political views arise out of the spiritual encounters they’ve had, but the truth is they are simply making spirituality subservient to their preformed politics.
On this episode, I try my best to separate the wheat from the chaff. I look at false spiritual paths, mostly promulgated by what I call The Bad Friend, and the forms the Bad Friend uses, including:
Reducing spirituality to function
The health influencer
Materialist techniques (magick and entheogens)
Fractalnoia and conspiracy theories
Schematic approaches
The subject supposed to know
Prophet-eering
“ancient” wisdom
confusing self-development with spiritual development
Conner Habib 