Systems Sluts and Qualia Whores

Pictured: A Systems Slut (left) and a Qualia Whore (right)

What do we do about mysteries? More specifically: what do we do about the mystery? You know the one. The One. The Big Mystery In The Sky. What do we do about it? 

There seem to be two approaches: the Systems Slut and the Qualia Whore. Every mystic, save for extreme outliers, is a combination of these two. 

The Systems Slut attempts to map what can be known of the mystery; these Newtons of the numinous find rules and patterns and places and write them down, draw them out, and create systems with them. John Dee was such a mystic. Creating a new language with which to speak with the angels is classic Systems Slut behavior. The proto-kabbalistic rabbis who measured the body of God, charted, mapped, and described the chariot of the lord were systems sluts. Lurianic Kabbalah too, is full of systems simping; the Etz HaChayim, the order of the Holy Sefirot, the Dark Sefirot, the Sub-Sefirot, etc. All systems. 

The Systems Slut seeks to find answers to the secrets of the universe, and the secrets the secret holders don't even know of yet. They know that mapping, describing, transcribing, understanding, and studying are essential to the project of doing something about The Mystery. Without these tools and keys and descriptions and understandings, one is sailing off on their lonesome into the Pacific Ocean on a raft powered by feelings and farts. Why would you ignore the centuries of data provided by our forebears who, just like us, sought to touch the mystery? Why repeat the mistakes of others when you can learn from them? 

Of course, feelings and farts are important. Hold in either and you are in for a world of pain. They are legitimate ways to interface with god, but you can miss out on worlds of feelings if feeling is all you do. So the Systems Slut holds off on surrendering to the sky. They make connections and take notes and create new languages. This is what must be done about The Mystery. 

The Qualia Whore takes a different path. The Qualia Whore doesn't want to measure the moon; the Qualia Whore wants to fuck the moon. This is barely a metaphor. The Qualia Whore prefers singing naked under waterfalls, their brains full of assortments of herbs and spices, stoned, exalted, one with the ancestors, one with the Gaian spirit of the universe. To the Qualia Whore, systems are only useful to the extent that they offer a felt presence of direct experience. If that experience is the joy of making systems and not of being stretched wider than the universe, the Qualia Whore sees that as sucking the finger pointing at the moon instead of fingering the moon. 

Obviously, both approaches are correct. The middle path is called the golden path for a reason. Systems are good and qualia are good, too! Get you a mystic who can do both. They are the ones who most skillfully further the project of doing something about the mystery. They are the ones who have both fun, soul-shattering love-gasms, and world-shattering eureka moments while doing it.

Balanced mystics can read maps, and take the time to. They also read poetry. They graph out varieties of experiences, and then set aside their measurements and judgments and thoughts, and experience each one. They iterate and improve and fine-tune, but they also throw out distinctions and differentiations like a child in the summer, ripping off his heavy clothes as he prepares to dive into a swimming pool full of his friends.

On a spectrum where the extreme left is Systems Sluttery gone wild, and the extreme right Qualia Whoredom run rampant, there is a wide middle space. A balance between these poles will look different for different people; a perfect 50/50 split is not necessarily the goal.

Some of my favorite mystics and teachers hang out in this middle space: people like Rob Burbea, Michael Taft, and Shinzen Young.  Of course, a balance of how balanced vs unbalanced things are is good too. I’d say Alan Watts leaned a tad too far to the right. Terence Mckenna vacillated wildly between both the extreme left and right. Both created incredible works of language and art that changed my life forever. I'm grateful to live in a universe with outliers at both ends of the spectrum. What wonderful weirdos they are.

So what do we do about The Mystery? 

With deep understanding, we make love to it. 

With deep love-making, we understand it.