Metaphysical Mulch

I approach this first line with a lot of care, carefully. My body is leaning forward as I type, as if I’m going somewhere, but I’m not exactly sure where it’s leading.

I’m halted by an array of critical thoughts. Thoughts educated in a 20th century European mindset that considers logic, scientific method, and the intellect superior to what I’m trying to create here. My whole life, I’ve struggled with the rigidity of thinking in Euro- and U.S.-American systems and institutions. I felt like something was amiss, missing. Something of real significance. When I was younger I was never quite able to put my finger on it, which caused a lot of depression in me as a teenager. It wasn’t until I started exploring esoteric philosophy, mystic poetry, and allowed myself to experience psychedelic realms of consciousness in my 20’s, that I began to understand what had been missing. My Spirit. My Soul. The source of that inexplicable Love I felt coursing through my whole body. The unbelievable mystery that upholds this whole experience.

We don’t know what exactly we are doing here. Nobody does. And all of that pompous domineering and controlling, exacting and forcing of rationalist dogmas and agendas, well, when undressed, turns out to be pretty performative. A theater show that hides an underlying existential insecurity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the scientific at all; I love science. I see science, in its purest form, as human curiosity in action. I love our sharp logical brains, I love reason. We couldn’t live without it. And. Something has been missing. Something we can’t quite wrap our beautiful minds around, but is so complementary and so fundamental to our existence, that its dismissal and systematic reduction has caused us great harm. 

There’s a reason why so many people are struggling in deep mental health crisis, burn-out, depression and anxiety. There’s a reason why we have been so disconnected from ourselves that we stand idly by while our planetary kingdoms are stripped of life and vitality for the sake of temporary profits. There’s a reason why we are collectively participating in our own destruction. I am of the persuasion that a few weeks of rest and some pills to numb the pain isn’t going to solve this problem. I think that should be obvious by now. I believe the solution is of a radically spiritual nature, and that maybe the first step is releasing our addiction to control, and admitting that we just don’t know.

We have labeled insecurity as a bad word. We don’t want to be anywhere near insecurity. We are often unconsciously repulsed by it, and reject that which we deem a fundamental weakness of character, an embarrassing flaw in our human psyche. But insecurity means: uncertainty, not knowing. Not knowing ourselves, not knowing our place in the world, or how to behave towards each other. We often mask insecurity with an array of bewildering megalomaniacal noise-making, or by attempting to blend into our surroundings so well that nobody notices us. Yet, when we truly embrace ‘not knowing’ – we enter an empty void. That void might feel a little uncomfortable, but it’s also a field of immeasurable potential. Who would you become if you could start from scratch?

When our taken-for-granted assumptions about our world shatter, something that many of us are currently experiencing, it will rattle our brains. We will scratch our heads in confusion. But it will also show us just how much we have been operating in very small and limited ideology-bottles bobbin along an infinite and uncharted ocean. A space so vast and so unbelievable that it’s basically impossible to speak about, or to describe it with words. If I am not not “this” well-defined and stable identity, then who am I? If this world is not “this” comprehensive and categorized set of facts and figures, then what is this place? Thousands of ancient scrolls and scriptures have attempted it, and still we find ourselves grasping for the answers. The answers still elude us, and yet, we keep searching. One of the most famous lines about this predicament comes from Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching: “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” And yet we continue pointing towards that unnamable source. Dorothee Sölle writes in The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance: “Nothing arouses a speaker to speak as much as the unutterable.” (my own translation from Dutch.) I know I can’t keep myself from making signposts in that direction, no matter how insecure I may feel about my place in it all sometimes.

The word “secure” derives from the Latin: se – without, cura – care, “without care,” or, “not feeling any apprehension.” So, in-secure technically means: “not without care.” If we can do anything to be of service to our rapidly changing and crumbling world: Let us not be without care, right now.

Once I restored my own relationship with the unknown, with life’s mysteries, I noticed how my journey was part of a larger cultural shift. Something was not just missing for me. Something has been missing for many of us. I started writing about it. Years passed. More and more writing accumulated. The thought of starting a magazine hovered in my mind for a good long time, until one bright day under a Leo sun, in the right company, a tiny green sprout began pushing its way out of the warm dense soil of my mind: Metaphysical Mulch.

I tend to have warm relationships with words. Like the word mulch, which I began to get to know a decade ago, when I was carrying wheelbarrows of mulch towards a giant tree in my then backyard. The tree had a treehouse in it where kids would play, and the cats too. Mulch was added to prevent the wild and abundant poison ivy from taking over the treehouse. It very much looked like a playground floor, something that would bounce a little if you’d fall down on it. I was studying philosophy at the time, deeply immersed in Asian and Existential Philosophy, floating through concepts and ideas that opened my mind and allowed for giant leaps into unknown and unknowable territories of consciousness. From matter, to spirit, from physical reality into metaphysical ideas beyond our grasp.

The word mulch has travelled with me since then, a co-conspirator and mind-ally. It has become metaphysical; a protective layer in my psyche that keeps the poison ivy from taking over my thoughts; a bedding that bounces me up a little bit when I fall out of the treehouse of myself. Metaphysical Mulch is a place to play around with ideas, it’s kindhearted in nature, it’s purposefully moving away from knowing things, and explicitly inviting wonder, awe, imagination, and curiosity. It’s about nurturing dream-sprouts of collective liberation, keeping the moisture locked in the earth of our good ideas, and cultivating collective vegetable gardens, imaginal or on the solid ground of matter. It is my hope that the articles, art, poems, and interviews featured in this magazine feel like kitchen table conversations that you know you are welcome to participate in. Get a chair, join the circle, peel a vegetable. I personally also need this to be a slow space. I know there’s already a cacophony of content out there. I feel overwhelmed when I sign up for a newsletter and get so many updates that I could not possibly read everything and thus, never open the newsletter again. I don’t want that. Here, we post something with the cycles of the moon. Full moon articles and new moon dialogues. One, maybe two at a time. We work with the seasons. We are not afraid of the deeper questions, the difficult ones, or the altogether unanswerable. We are not afraid of slowing things down and tuning in with true attention. We are not without care, for each other, for the world we live in, for everything that has died, and everything yet to be born. We honor the cycles of compost turning into earth, seeds turning into plants, turning into compost again.

Welcome, dear reader. I’m leaning forward with curiosity. Continuing to create in collaboration with fellow writers, poets, artists, thinkers, witches, wizards and magicians, human beings who are all interested in illuminating a collective leap into the unknown. It’s a small contribution to a movement I believe is of vital importance to our collective futures.

Join us on the bouncy mulched grounds by the treehouse, eyes looking out over the vast fields of possibility on this gorgeous planet. We are so glad you are here.