My Real Life

2,096 words

Russian translation here

In Introduction to Magic, Julius Evola recommends a spiritual exercise to be carried out just before going to sleep at night. It involves imagining that you are climbing up a mountain. As you progress further and further upwards, you are supposed to imagine the sun gradually rising. When you reach the peak, it stands directly overhead. Then you can drift off to sleep. On awakening, before rolling out of bed, you are supposed to imagine going back down the mountain and, as you do so, the sun setting. So, one enters the daylight on falling asleep, and the dark of night on awakening.

The point of this exercise is to accustom the traveler of the Left Hand Path to the idea that his mundane, waking life is but a dream. It’s not real life: real life is lived in communion with the deeper parts of oneself. Following the Left Hand Path is difficult in the modern world. It’s not easy to see yourself as a black magician when you’re standing in the express line, wondering whether the clerk will notice that you actually have fifteen items (not twelve) in your cart. It’s difficult to preserve the dignity of a Runemaster when your job requires you to periodically provide a urine specimen. In the modern world it is more important than ever to achieve the age-old realization of the mystics: that daily life is unreal, and real life elsewhere.

Mysticism may not be your cup of tea, but there is an important political lesson to be learned from all of this. As my readers know, my mission in life is the destruction of the modern world (see my essay “How I Found My Mission in Life”). One of the principal ways in which I pursue this mission is by writing for Counter-Currents. When I am not writing, I am reading authors like Evola, Guénon, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Carl Schmitt, Heidegger, and others – authors whose ideas fuel my mission.

Well, there is something I’ve left out, because it pains me to mention it. When I’m not writing and reading, a good portion of my life is spent on . . . . choke, gasp . . . my job. Yes, I have a job just like the rest of you. It happens to afford me a good deal of free time, but it saps a great deal of my time and energy nonetheless. To make matters worse, it frequently occupies my thoughts. My job is basically a psychic vampire.

My job requires dealing with some really stupid and sometimes ill-willed people. In 1922 T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), unsuited for civilian life, enlisted in the RAF under an assumed name. When his deception was discovered, he was asked why he did it and replied: “There is nothing more restful than taking orders from fools.” Alas, I do not find it restful. I brood about it. I think about things that could “go wrong.” I imagine arguments with co-workers, just so that I will know what to say should such arguments ever actually take place.

As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve realized what a trap this is. I’ve realized that it’s not only bad for my health, it makes it harder for me to pursue my mission. And so I’ve adopted the perspective that my job is actually a kind of “cover,” and that my “real life” is working for what we optimistically refer to as The Movement. My readers also know that I’m a big fan of the spy films and TV shows of the 60s (see my essay “‘The Flash in the Pan’: Fascism & Fascist Insignia in the Spy Spoofs of the 1960s”). So it pleases me to think of myself as a secret agent – a double agent, really. My co-workers know absolutely nothing of my “real life,” and would be horrified if they learned the truth. For them, I have carefully constructed a cover identity and cover personality, one that is friendly, apolitical, and harmless (I think they think I’m a bit of a milquetoast).

It’s sometimes a struggle, however, to maintain this perspective. As I’ve said, I often get drawn into thinking, and caring, too much about my job. So I’ve had to get ruthless with myself. I’ve actually made a list of the basic things I need to do to do my job well and to keep it. I made this list because I was always going above and beyond the call of duty (it’s hard for me to do things halfway). Now I do just enough to get by, and give the appearance of caring.

I have separate email accounts for my job and for my other activities. I stop checking the job account after 5:00pm. I don’t check it on weekends. I have started saying “no” when people ask me to take on extra work – and I’ve always got a ready excuse (i.e., lie) to justify my refusal. (Don’t worry about me, my job is pretty darn secure.) If I have any “homework” to do on the weekends, I always prioritize writing and reading for the Movement ahead of anything else.

I also have little mantras I use to keep my job in perspective: “This is all bullshit. This all bullshit . . .” I say to myself over and over. And: “None of this matters. None of this matters . . .” I also have positive mantras as well. When working on my essays, and when I’ve finished them, I often find myself saying “This is all that matters. This is all that matters . . .”

And it really is all that matters, folks. We are standing at the edge of the abyss, poised to lose – if present trends continue – our people, our lands, our culture. Compared to this, my personal problems and yours are meaningless. Our “jobs” are meaningless.

And yet, for a long time I couldn’t really come to grips with this. I kept getting seduced into caring about things that don’t matter. I think one of the reasons for this is that I was afraid that I might be right about everything – that we might be right. This may seem peculiar, so let me explain.

Suppose that our demographic projections are correct, and that white people truly are scheduled for virtual extinction – and quite definitely scheduled to lose control of the U.S. and Europe. Suppose we are right in thinking that those who will replace us care nothing about preserving our culture. Suppose we are right in believing that “multiculturalism” is an impossible fantasy and a barely-concealed program of destruction aimed at our people and our culture. Suppose that we are right to see feminism as a disaster, which has crippled both men and women, destroyed the family, and (in large measure) precipitated the present demographic crisis. Suppose we are right to see our economy as careening toward disaster. Suppose we are right to see modern, Western culture as utterly bankrupt, as descending every day to new depths of vileness such as we never thought we’d see in our lifetimes.

If we are right about all of it, the only natural, initial reaction is panic and despair. For a long time I was dimly aware that all of these things were true and that I had assessed them correctly. But these truths remained on a kind of hazy periphery. I didn’t like to think about them too much. I suppose in some way I hoped that I wrong. And it’s terribly easy to fall into self doubt about these matters. After all, our cities have not yet descended into complete anarchy. We are surrounded by bright, new technology that keeps getting better every day – the sort of stuff we would have considered implausible science fiction forty years ago (when Star Fleet’s communicators were bigger than our present cell phones). The trains continue to run. Our shopping carts are full. We have access to the best health care money can buy. Netflix still delivers.

But all of this, of course, is maya. And we are living on borrowed time.

It really is possible to know something but not to believe it. Many Americans, and Europeans, are in such a state. They really know how bad things are, but they have yet to truly believe. By this I mean they have yet to truly, consciously accept that we are facing the worst crisis of our entire history. The sheer magnitude of it makes it hard to take in, hard to process.

There was no single event that shifted me from knowing (abstractly) about our crisis to truly believing in it. I didn’t get mugged. My neighborhood was not looted and torched. It was just as if one day I woke up. I looked around at my life and realized that most of it was indeed bullshit, and that faced with the present crisis I simply had to stop caring about meaningless things, refocus my life, and DO SOMETHING. It was also a matter of self-respect. I could not respect myself otherwise.

Finally facing our problems – finally, you might say, looking into the abyss – was not nearly as traumatic as I expected it to be. And it turned out to be the key to making my life meaningful. Even when I was seduced into caring about my job and other intrinsically trivial matters, I knew dimly that none of it meant anything. Having now faced the crisis and reassessed my priorities, I am able to say that my life is devoted to the most important mission there is. That mission than which no greater can be conceived. Compared to saving one’s people and one’s culture, all other problems, concerns, goals, desires, tasks, plans, preferences, and predicaments are completely, totally trivial and unimportant.

I do not feel despair. I actually feel hopeful. In fact, I will not allow myself to feel anything other than hope and optimism. We can’t afford to feel any other way, because pessimism and despair nurture defeatism and make failure almost inevitable. Facing the truth and committing myself to the Cause has also transformed my daily life in a curious way. The old trivia that used to get me down no longer does. I know that, whatever happens, my life is devoted to the most important mission of all, and that however I suffer I am right.

Food tastes better. The air smells sweeter. I’ve started noticing how pleasurable it is to feel the heat of the sun on my face. I am able to enjoy all of these things more than ever and even to own them in a strange way: to say that ours is the cause of life, and that these things belong to me. Our enemies are fundamentally anti-life. These things do not belong to them.

I am not joking. It is as if I have achieved that mystical Zen state of satori. I have recognized that the life of deceit and of outward conformity I am forced to lead is the night – and I can now live that life when I need to, because I know it is only the night, only a dream. I am in the day. I have climbed the mountain and the sun has risen with me. I am awake.

And now it is time for you to awaken as well, if you have not already done so. Don’t quit your job, but renounce caring about it. Divide your being into the you that works and must deal with those who sleep, and the you that is awake to the truth that others cannot face. And now, out of recognition of that truth, DO SOMETHING. Awaken those around you who seem to have the potential for something more than sleep. Read and learn about the present crisis. Read the authors I mentioned earlier, and others. Buy books published by people who believe what we believe. Read Counter-Currents and other Movement sources. Write for Counter-Currents, if you have something to say. If not, send them money. Cancel your cable TV, which floods your home with brain rot and propaganda, and send the money to Counter-Currents. Haunt other people’s websites and post politically incorrect comments. When you’re in the movie theatre, and the Brilliant Black Doctor or Scientist or Judge appears on screen, snicker loudly. Meet with others who think the way you do.

The sleeper must awaken. He must awaken and drag everyone else kicking and screaming away from the shadows and out of the cave, into real life. Now.