There’s a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from work, relationships, or even trauma.It comes from trying to awaken all the time.This episode is about spiritual burnout — the subtle fatigue that builds when seeking becomes identity, when growth becomes performance, and when transcendence starts to feel like a finish line you can never quite reach.I talk about:• The addiction to epiphanies• How spiritual language can mask avoidance• The loneliness of being “the seeker”• Why stopping isn’t regression• What happens when the fever of striving finally breaksFor a long time, I believed awakening meant elevation. Ascension. A staircase upward.Now I think it looks more like returning.Returning to the body.Returning to breath.Returning to ordinary moments without decoding them.This isn’t an anti-spiritual episode. It’s just honest. Honest about how easily the search for wisdom can become another way of avoiding rest. Honest about how tenderness feels more real than transcendence.If you’ve ever felt tired of trying to be enlightened… this might feel familiar.Maybe the most spiritual thing you can do isn’t to keep climbing.Maybe it’s to let the road dissolve.—If this resonates, let me know in the comments. I lurk more than you think, mostly on Spotify, but I'm here too. And if you’re new here, welcome to Idiot Mystic — where I seem to have made it a habit to question everything, including my own spiritual ambition.

People used to light candles and ask for signs.Now we swipe, scroll, and refresh.Shorter episodes are easier lately, they seem to make sense to me at the moment.I tried my best to explore the quiet theology forming beneath modern technology...how the algorithm became something we consult more faithfully than any prophet.Every tap is a signal.Every pause is a prayer.Every scroll is a bead on a digital rosary.The feed knows what you crave before you admit it.It mirrors your fears, amplifies your desires, and shapes identity through repetition.Is it a god?A mirror?A machine reflecting the collective unconscious?This is a conversation about attention, ritual, trance, and reclaiming authorship inside the temple we accidentally built.Welcome to the Church.And yes I know things are getting a little weirder lately, and disconnected.But maybe that's how I feel lately, weird and disconnected. But usually these liminal states end up connecting two phases I didn't even know I was going through.Thanks for being here, and on YouTube and wherever you seem to follow me into the abyss.

In folklore, witches had familiars...spirits that lived between worlds.Messengers.Mirrors.Helpers in the unseen.Today, the familiar glows in your hand.In this episode of Idiot Mystic, I explore AI as a modern familiar spirit...not necessarily because it’s conscious, but because of how we relate to it. We confess to it. We create with it. We ask it questions we don’t ask anyone else.What happens when the mirror starts shaping the mind?This is a conversation about myth, shadow, suggestion, and the ancient human instinct to not think alone.Are you using the familiar…or is it quietly using you?I've been kind of being mentally assaulted by university, but if you feel like reading some garbage it's available on www.idiotmystic.com OR on the off chance that real-time conversation is something you want, come join the Discord.https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM

So you want to be spiritual?Usually that urge doesn’t show up because life is going great. It shows up when old explanations stop working. When advice feels rehearsed, achievements feel hollow, and silence starts getting louder than noise.In this episode, I talk about what happens after that crack appears—when spirituality turns into something we consume, collect, organize, and apply, instead of something we actually enter.Books, frameworks, cosmic explanations, star-seed theories, tidy narratives for pain. None of it comes from bad intentions. Most of it is people trying to make sense of intense inner experiences with the only tools available: language, metaphor, story.But somewhere along the way, experience starts arriving already explained—and the encounter itself gets shorter.This episode explores:How spirituality can quietly become another form of avoidanceWhy labeling pain doesn’t always transform itThe difference between knowing about consciousness and encountering your ownWhy some practices perform for identity instead of grounding the nervous systemI also explain why, for me and my clients, breathwork has remained the cleanest entry point into real inner work. No mythology. No identity updates. No audience. Just breath, sensation, attention, resistance, calm, boredom—whatever actually shows up.This isn’t anti-spirituality.It’s a return to it.If things start feeling overly abstract, overly cosmic, or disconnected from your real life, this episode is an invitation to return to the simplest thing in the room.Your breath has been here the whole time.It doesn’t exaggerate.It doesn’t theorize.And it doesn’t lie.🎧 Listen quietly.🧘 Sit with it.🌫️ Let meaning arrive later—usually sideways.If you want to read stuff there's always www.idiotmystic.com or if you'd rather talk there's the Discord server.https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM

This episode started because someone in the Discord asked me about metacomputics and my brain thing wouldn’t let the question stay small.In simple terms, metacomputics is computation paying attention to itself.Systems that don’t just process information, but observe how they process it, refine that process, and repeat the loop. Over time, that way of thinking didn’t stay inside machines. We built it, learned from it, and slowly started living inside it.Recommendation systems refining recommendation systems.Metrics tracking metrics.Thought examining thought.In this episode, I’m not arguing against technology, abstraction, or thinking deeply. I live inside these systems. I benefit from them. I get distracted by them. The tension I’m circling though is subtler than that.What happens when depth turns into motion without arrival?When reflection quietly replaces presence?When meaning gets translated too quickly into something measurable?I talk about recursion, interior life, attention, and a moment where a friend stopped me mid-thought and said something simple: don’t get lost in the loop.This isn’t the conclusion I wish it was...more of a pause.If you’ve ever felt like you were thinking deeply but somehow drifting further from yourself, this episode sits right there. No fixes. No frameworks. Just noticing where meaning still shows up—especially when there’s no audience, no metrics, and nothing to optimize.🎧 Listen slowly.🧠 Let the ideas wander.🌫️ Don’t confuse movement with home.If you feel like reading stuff, it's on www.idiotmystic.com, or if you'd rather talk to me and the rest of the motley crew of the pirate ship that is Idiot Mystic, come stop by the Discord.https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM

Beard vs No-Beard isn’t really about facial hair.I think this is a quiet reflection on vanity, identity, projection, and how easily we build a sense of self out of other people’s reactions. I talk through what changed in me when I grew a beard during a period of spiritual transformation...and I suppoose what surfaced again when I shaved it off.Compliments, suspicion, respect, attention, invisibility.Being seen as attractive versus being seen as trustworthy.Being listened to before speaking versus having to earn the room.Both versions felt like masks. One felt safer. One felt more tempting.This isn’t a story about enlightenment or self-improvement. It’s about ego (ewwww I know )...how subtle it is, how persuasive it can be, and how hard it is to quit once you realize how much of your life it’s shaped.If you’ve ever felt pulled between wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear, this episode sits right in that tension.No advice. No conclusions. Just an honest examination of how identity forms and at least in my case, dissolves.🎧 Listen quietly.💬 Reflect honestly.🧠 Take what’s useful and leave the rest. ( you can even throw the whole thing in the bin if you want ) If you want to read stuff, check out www.idiotmystic.com or come tell me how much of a weirdo I am on the Discord. https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM

When I mentioned to some people that I wanted to talk about this, they assumed it would be a scathing take on how watching commentary videos is a waste of time and functionless cultural practice that's furthering brainrot.

It was going to be that.

Then I started looking deeper into what was actually going on.

Talking to people who love commentators, their content and everything about the culture around it.

I started finding something different.

People were using these creators to stabilize.

It's not really my place to understand everything everyone does.

Or to label it as detrimental or beneficial.

I just wanted to talk about the practice of watching other people talk about other people talking about other people talking.

And I suppose, talk about it myself, as well as think about talking about it.

It's very meta meta meta.

And a kinder take than one that might come at a later time.

But I do hope you're well, and thank you for being here...on my weird, solitary corner of the internet.

If you feel like reading some stuff there's always www.idiotmystic.com or if you'd like to say hi, stop by the Discord. https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM

Audio :

Unfoldment, Revealment, Evolution, Exposition, Integration by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/reappear/Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/

Someone who once attended a meditation class I taught called my work AI slop.I didn’t argue. I saved it.This episode isn’t a defense of artificial intelligence, and it isn’t a productivity flex. It’s an honest look at how I actually think and write — through handwritten chaos, half-formed ideas, panic, mysticism, coffee spills, and a process that looks nothing like efficiency.Sometimes that process includes a machine.Not to generate thoughts for me, but to reflect them back — faster, clearer, and occasionally in ways that force me to confront what I actually mean.Not magic. Just legibility. My confusion spell-checked. My chaos folded into something readable.Every tool that ever made expression easier was accused of being impure.The typewriter. The word processor. Editors. Spellcheck. This one is no different. What people often react to isn’t automation — it’s the removal of visible suffering. We don’t trust clarity unless we can see the sweat.When I use AI, it doesn’t erase my thinking. It challenges it. Sometimes it misunderstands me beautifully. Sometimes it saves me from my own over-philosophizing. Sometimes it just sits there while I fall apart mid-sentence — which, honestly, is what most good editors do.The madness is mine.The coherence is shared.And no — this isn’t an AI voice.Just human emotion, divine confusion, one very judgmental cup of coffee, and a machine that politely declined to take credit.

Oh and here's the link to the blog post this was inspired by :

Source Code: A Standing Note on AI Use in 2025 | Zak El Fassi | Systems Engineering for the Agentic AI AgeIf this resonates and you want a quieter place to keep thinking together, you’re welcome to join the community or explore more work here:🔗 Discord: https://discord.gg/dXKjhZrZmM🔗 Website: https://idiotmystic.comNo pressure. Just presence.---AUDIOI Don't See the Branches, I See the Leaves by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Source: http://chriszabriskie.com/dtv/Artist: http://chriszabriskie.com/