You have most likely encountered people who say:
"I’m spiritual but not religious."

But if you ask them for a precise distinction between spirituality and religion, the responses are something like:

•"I believe in something bigger, but I don’t like labels."
•"All religions are basically the same, so I just take what resonates."
•"God is within me, I don’t need a middleman."

Taken together, these statements form a pattern.
Let me explain... It is basically a “Religion of the Self.”

By the Self, for the Self and in terms of the Self.

Please understand I am criticizing the underlying presuppositions of such a claim, not any persons who make this claim. I’ll qualify my criticism…

• By the self: The path is self-initiated and self-designed. It is separate from a lineage, a tradition, or a community of practice that carries epistemic or existential weight.

• For the self...

Here’s one problem:
How can there be truths about reality when truth is a normative value—something we ought to care about?

For example:
Do you believe that you should seek the truth?
If you answer yes… …it's a normative value for you. You believe it matters.

This is why people risk comfort, careers, even their lives, to speak what they believe to be true.

It’s based on the assumption that truth is real and worth pursuing.

So truth carries a normative value.

Now ask yourself:
Where does that value come from?...

The dominant framework of the Middle Ages divided reality between the natural and the supernatural.

But the Enlightenment rejected this—they claimed it undermined their attempts to do science (make sense of the world) and practice politics.

They proposed that the natural is all there is.

But they didn’t realize that they merely traded one distorting framework for another (which now silently constrains how we understand ourselves and the world).

I’ll show you how… When the Enlightenment rejected the supernatural/natural dichotomy, they treated the supernatural not as false in a specific way, but as ontologically irrelevant—as a category that had lost its ability to do explanatory work.

In other words, not real.

From two realms, one was chosen:
The natural.

But the postmodernists saw a fundamental flaw in this rejection…

Legacy religions have largely lost their capacity to disclose the sacred in a way that resonates with the pluralistic (globalized) and technologically mediated world we now inhabit.

But the sacred hasn’t disappeared—so the question becomes:

What can now disclose the sacred in a way that can integrate us across cultures and traditions?

This is where Bracken’s idea of the divine matrix comes in...🧵 What Bracken seeks is not another religious system, but a lingua philosophica:

A shared conceptual language within which different religious and spiritual traditions can resonate and dialogue, without collapsing into each other…

Legacy religions emerged as powerful adaptive systems within a particular environment

They helped people to discern what matters—and how to live in right relationship to self (others) and the world

But the world in which these systems evolved no longer exists

And legacy religions are disoriented in this new ecology

Why?

Because they currently lack a living grammar for relevance realization

Let me explain… At every moment of your conscious life, you are overwhelmed with a flood of possible information, sensations, thoughts, choices.

And yet—somehow—you are not paralyzed by this.

You manage to zero in on what matters. You can discern what is relevant.

And this capacity is not a passive ability…

You have been invited to consider that the sacred may be something you encounter:

That calls to you, addresses you, transforms you—and that it didn’t disappear—but has become inaccessible because you’ve forgotten how to see it.

This is the forgotten wound of modernity.

And the imaginal is the lost thread which can stitch it back together.

Let me explain… If the sacred is not accessed by analytical reasoning alone—but requires a reorientation of the whole self to undergo a transformation—it means that:

Such a reorientation cannot occur without the capacity to inhabit ways of seeing and being that transcend our immediate propositional understanding.

The imaginal affords precisely this—because…

We tend to think that if we just adopt the right beliefs—we’ll somehow reconnect with the sacred.

But this arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the condition we find ourselves in:

The Enlightenment radically transformed the very grammar by which we once oriented ourselves to the sacred.

Let me explain… Our culture has undergone a threefold reduction (initiated by the Enlightenment):

Firstly, we’ve reduced ontology (our understanding of Being itself) to a single level—reality was flattened, its many levels of depth dissolved into the merely material.

Second, our culture reduced knowing to a single form: the knowledge that something is the case.

Last but not least we’ve reduced intelligibility itself (what it means for something to be understood) to generalizability. That is, only what can be abstracted, formalized, and universally applied is deemed worthy of understanding.

These reductions blind you to…

What does the word "sacred" conjure for you?

Maybe distant images of divine beings—or felt notions of untouchable realms?

But what if you tried looking at it differently?

What if the sacred was a kind of felt depth—that calls you to attention and transformation?

The following is an invitation… …a way of approaching the sacred with a new perspective—not an attempt at a final definition:

This notion of the sacred (as a kind of felt depth) is based on converging arguments from different thinkers.

One of them is the quadruple of ultimacy—an expansion of Schellenberg’s “triple transcendence.”

In this framework, you are invited to discern four dimensions through which the sacred becomes accessible as a participatory reality.

Let me explain…

If I say:
When people are hungry—they eat

You don’t go:
Oh that's really profound!

Why?

Because you don’t find it highly plausible—where plausible means:

I take it very seriously

You want something that empowers you

So how do you discover something that is profound? First of all profundity is part of how we sense that things are real

Let me explain:

Real is comparative

Real isn’t like red—real is like tall

Something is more real or less real than something else

For example…

We often reduce mental images to visualization—replaying a memory or envisioning an ideal future.

But mental images may not be tied to "seeing" at all—pointing to something more profound…🧵 Traditionally there are two camps:

One camp views mental images as "inner pictures"—a seemingly intuitive notion since many experience visual-like imagery in their minds.

However—the existence of conditions like aphantasia (where individuals cannot form such visual images) complicates this perspective…

We typically think of reality as something that we simply observe and understand.

But when you're deeply engaged in an activity—something more complex is happening.

It’s a deeply embodied experience—a sensed presence.

This is how it shapes your way of being in the world…🧵 The imaginal is a mode of cognition where we engage with reality through imagination (not as a departure from the real) but as a deeper exploration of it—enabling us to "be" in a situation and interact with it meaningfully.

Sensed presence emerges from this process as an experiential anchor…

If you want to increase your cognitive agency—practice at least these two things… 🧵

https://x.com/naval/status/1880415724994486452

Why at least 2 practices?

So you have 2 things that are in opponent processing (meaning they work together to make you adaptive—but they’re doing opposite things)

The first one is…

Imagine this: you’re asked to notice your breath

Then—you’re asked to notice yourself noticing your breath

But who is noticing that?

This question points toward a profound realization: the Imaginal "I"

But what is it that you can never quite point to—yet it underpins all you know and experience? At the foundation of your experience lie two fundamental modes of knowing that shape how you engage with reality.

The first one is Participatory Knowing.

This is how you "know" through your deep engagement with the world.

It’s not just thinking—it’s knowing by being an integral part of the patterns and principles of reality.

A skilled musician (for instance) does not merely know music theoretically but participates in it—embodying its flow.

The second mode of knowing is…

Have you ever had a "gut feeling" that was right? Or just knew something without knowing how you know?

That’s your intuition—and most people either trust it blindly or dismiss it completely—because they don’t know how it works.

But it’s too powerful not to understand it…🧵 Robin Hogarth proposes that intuition results from implicit learning—the ability to subconsciously pick up on complex patterns without deliberate awareness.

Experiments by Arthur Reber demonstrate this…

It’s a silent epidemic affecting nearly everyone:
The Meaning Crisis

We are drowning in bullshit—literally “meaninglessness”

We feel disconnected from ourselves (each other) and a viable future

Alienation without (anxiety within)

So how can you reclaim meaning in your life?

https://twitter.com/thedankoe/status/1858264703539007860

At first, let's define what meaning in life isn’t:

Philosopher Susan Wolf makes clear that meaning cannot be reduced to morality, worldly success, or even subjective well-being.

Think about it…

The human brain didn't physically change over the past thousands of years.

What changed was our "software"—and shamans were the first programmers.

They installed a "software update" that transformed how we think and solve problems.

This is how they did it.

—THREAD— Through ritual practices, like:

• Sleep deprivation
• Intense rhythmic activities (like dancing)
• Social isolation
• Psychedelics

They disrupted ordinary thought patterns to break mental frames.

But why did they want to break mental frames?

Science shows us that "solid matter" is mostly empty space.

The atoms making up our bodies and loved ones are largely…nothing.

And yet—here you are—finding meaning and connection as real as the ground beneath your feet.

This is where it gets interesting (and a bit absurd): (1/7) This paradox—where our personal view of reality collides with a cosmic truth—is what’s called absurdity.

A “perspectival clash” that leaves us at a crossroads (questioning what’s real).

Try to answer this question: What time is it on the sun?

The same ability that makes you incredibly adaptive (your pattern recognition) can also trap you in mental prisons.

Here's a fascinating experiment that shows why—thinking outside the box—is harder than it sounds: Subjects are asked to connect nine dots with four lines without lifting the pen.

Seems simple enough, right?
But most people fail.

And when shown the solution—they often get angry and accuse others of "cheating".

Why?

CEOs, athletes, and artists chase it.
Ancient shamans mastered it.

It’s an experience where:
• Time dissolves
• Your self-consciousness melts away
• You're completely absorbed in what you're doing — performing at your absolute best

Here’s how you invite the ~Flow State~: (1/8) Firstly — we must acknowledge that sustaining focus and engagement is challenging.
Your mind is prone to distraction — your energy wanes — and motivation falters.

But there's good news:
Flow is accessible to anyone when the following 5 steps align…

In a world overwhelmed by spiritual confusion and the relentless grind of modern life
—Spinoza (the radical 17th-century philosopher)—
offers a simple yet profound truth.

It redefines how you can find inner peace and harmony in your daily life:

—THREAD— (1/6) We often feel torn between two sides:

◦ A distant—unreachable God
◦ A cold (material) world with no higher meaning

Both worldviews create tension—leaving us disconnected from nature, the divine, and even ourselves.