Well put. I have a couple of Peat/bioenergetics-inspired follow ups in drafts I keep tinkering with. I fear they could break the woo-ometer if they ever see the light of day 📈😵💫
I love this articulation! Hahaha maybe you're rubbing off on me Tom because the woo rating seems too high. That is, this post doesn't seem very "controversial" or woo-ey to me at all. It just makes a lot of sense to me.
It's always good to see people writing, talking and thinking about money in new ways.
Money reaches deep into us. It has informed the way we speak, write and count. The way thought, philosophy & science has developed. Theology is soaked through with it. There are wonderful resources on all this that are squarely ignore by Economists most of whom would rather believe that money was simply a veil over the 'real' economy.
It's wonderful that you and others are seeing through this. But I would gently suggest some caution when using metaphors around money. Money already inheres within them and so they become self-referential. This can stop us seeing things clearly.
Take the idea of money 'flowing'. Actually money is more akin to a quantum phenomenon. It's either here or there. Either yours or mine. It's never in between.
I know its difficult not to use metaphor. I'm as guilty as anyone. We just need always to bear in mind that the map is not the territory.
The late Prof Nigel Dodd (sociology of money) talked about the lifeblood/flow/circulation metaphors for money and quietly suggested in his footnotes that emission/ejaculation is a more appropriate metaphor for money. Its that aspect of it just instantaneously coming into being (the quantum thing) that is literally true of money which flow metaphors don't capture.
The idea that money (or rather debt) is determinate (see my determinacy/indeterminacy idea) is from Phillip Goodchild. There is I think one economist who considers these ideas... Alvaro Cencini Money, Income and Time (A Quantum-Theoretical Approach).
Stockpile knowledge, not just beans—practice distributed dependence, cultivate local alliances, reduce your energy footprint, and stop waiting for permission to act. Collapse isn't coming, it's already unevenly distributed, so tune your life to resilience, not comfort..tbc
Ontological Aikido and Regenerative Culture aren’t just coping strategies—they’re full-stack metaphysical judo for navigating the death spiral of our current civilizational software.
Ontological Aikido is the practice of staying centered when everything around you is trying to collapse your coherence—propaganda, vibes, financial stress, identity attacks, spiritual warfare, bad UX, worse leadership. It's about redirecting the metaphysical violence of the world—not by resisting head-on, but by flowing around it, through it, with intention. You notice when people are trying to overwrite your worldview, and instead of reacting in kind, you alchemize. You transmute confusion into clarity, control into compassion, collapse into choice. You become an ontological sovereign—not by dominating others but by becoming unrattleable in your truth.
Regenerative Culture, meanwhile, is how we survive the long fall. It's not just “sustainability,” which presumes the system is worth sustaining. It’s about composting the slop and growing futures from decay. It’s where grief is metabolized into action, trauma into wisdom, disconnection into community. It’s a set of cultural defaults that prioritize healing over extraction, presence over performance, reciprocity over transaction.
Together?
They let you surrender with dignity, resist with precision, and build with love.
You don’t cling to the past or collapse under the present. You learn to surf ontological instability like it’s a wave. You align your personal energy with post-collapse reality. You embody new economic logics, new spiritual syntax, new story structures. You become—intentionally—a node in a post-capitalist parapsychological ecosystem.
This isn’t self-help. It’s self-defense against reality erosion. And it’s also a form of world generation. Regenerative Culture isn't just about surviving collapse—it’s about making sure something beautiful survives through you.
You live like you’re the ancestor of a future worth loving.
And you don’t fight collapse alone.
Because collapse is not just a falling apart—it’s a falling together.
Imagine a dojo not of wood and stone, but of frequencies and thoughts.
At its center, a practitioner stands—not with fists clenched, but hands open. A debate arises, hurled like a spear of certainty: "Only the material is real!"
But instead of blocking, the practitioner shifts slightly, lets the force pass, and gently redirects it—not to win, but to reveal.
The mirror behind him is made of bamboo—not glass. Flexible, living, and hollow. It reflects not images but interiorities. It shows that belief systems are momentum, not absolutes.
Tom, this was incredibly thoughtful and well-written. I’m inclined to agree with you that reintegrating money is the main quest for humanity right now.
I got a lot out of this piece, and it came at just the right time. Thank you.
Thank you for helping us see we’re in this together!
It’s powerful when people realize they’re not alone in the universe. We can solve problems and build alternative solutions together, instead of isolating out of shame.
That’s what community is and does. You’re doing profoundly important work and creating community in a way you may not even be aware of.
On top of the more obvious amazing work you’ve done. :)
Thoughts and observations on the notion of spiritul bypass.
What if spiritual bypass isn't a mistake, but a necessary coping tactic that lets you survive long enough to become conscious of it?
Like—yeah—it's a bypass.
It routes around trauma, discomfort, shadow work, grief. But sometimes the bodymind just can't metabolize it all at once.
Sometimes a person needs to believe in beautiful nonsense to avoid drowning in the weight of unbearable truths.
In those moments, bypassing isn't a denial of reality—it’s a protective hallucination. And that hallucination, if approached with eventual curiosity and care, can become a bridge.
Spiritual bypass becomes harmful when it's institutionalized, commodified, and weaponized—when people peddle fantasy to maintain control, or when someone refuses forever to revisit the pain beneath the bypass.
But in the arc of a full healing journey? Bypass might be the cocoon.
So yeah. What if spiritual bypass is just... stage one?
Well put. I have a couple of Peat/bioenergetics-inspired follow ups in drafts I keep tinkering with. I fear they could break the woo-ometer if they ever see the light of day 📈😵💫
DUUUUUDE. The people demand it. Just mark them 11/10 like I do ;)
How do you calculate woo ratings? I’m curious to see the math.
It’s actually a committee of 4 religious leaders using entrails, coffee grounds, astrology and ChatGPT.
I demand AI-generated video proof.
Also whose entrails? 😂
I just generated the image and now I can't paste it in the comments, boooo.
Entrails basically any LE subscriber and volunteer for the cause. Part of my cult initiation process.
Bah! Lame.
You can have my entrails when I’m done with them!
I will be sure to inform the DMV so they can update my organ donor requirements accordingly.
Please share them, John.
Bioenergetics is my bread and butter (and for your same concern I share mostly on Threads nowadays, but should go back to Substack soon).
P.s.: check Devaraj Sandberg on my Substack recommendations and on Youtube!
P.p.s: just started following you 🌱
I love this articulation! Hahaha maybe you're rubbing off on me Tom because the woo rating seems too high. That is, this post doesn't seem very "controversial" or woo-ey to me at all. It just makes a lot of sense to me.
I gave myself an extra point for crystals…
It's always good to see people writing, talking and thinking about money in new ways.
Money reaches deep into us. It has informed the way we speak, write and count. The way thought, philosophy & science has developed. Theology is soaked through with it. There are wonderful resources on all this that are squarely ignore by Economists most of whom would rather believe that money was simply a veil over the 'real' economy.
It's wonderful that you and others are seeing through this. But I would gently suggest some caution when using metaphors around money. Money already inheres within them and so they become self-referential. This can stop us seeing things clearly.
Take the idea of money 'flowing'. Actually money is more akin to a quantum phenomenon. It's either here or there. Either yours or mine. It's never in between.
I know its difficult not to use metaphor. I'm as guilty as anyone. We just need always to bear in mind that the map is not the territory.
I wish you well in your work!
Tell me more about the quantum idea? Seems very rich but I don’t get it.
I did an outline of my take on it here:
https://churchofburn.substack.com/p/money-and-reality?r=3qzwt
The late Prof Nigel Dodd (sociology of money) talked about the lifeblood/flow/circulation metaphors for money and quietly suggested in his footnotes that emission/ejaculation is a more appropriate metaphor for money. Its that aspect of it just instantaneously coming into being (the quantum thing) that is literally true of money which flow metaphors don't capture.
The idea that money (or rather debt) is determinate (see my determinacy/indeterminacy idea) is from Phillip Goodchild. There is I think one economist who considers these ideas... Alvaro Cencini Money, Income and Time (A Quantum-Theoretical Approach).
Stockpile knowledge, not just beans—practice distributed dependence, cultivate local alliances, reduce your energy footprint, and stop waiting for permission to act. Collapse isn't coming, it's already unevenly distributed, so tune your life to resilience, not comfort..tbc
Ontological Aikido and Regenerative Culture aren’t just coping strategies—they’re full-stack metaphysical judo for navigating the death spiral of our current civilizational software.
Ontological Aikido is the practice of staying centered when everything around you is trying to collapse your coherence—propaganda, vibes, financial stress, identity attacks, spiritual warfare, bad UX, worse leadership. It's about redirecting the metaphysical violence of the world—not by resisting head-on, but by flowing around it, through it, with intention. You notice when people are trying to overwrite your worldview, and instead of reacting in kind, you alchemize. You transmute confusion into clarity, control into compassion, collapse into choice. You become an ontological sovereign—not by dominating others but by becoming unrattleable in your truth.
Regenerative Culture, meanwhile, is how we survive the long fall. It's not just “sustainability,” which presumes the system is worth sustaining. It’s about composting the slop and growing futures from decay. It’s where grief is metabolized into action, trauma into wisdom, disconnection into community. It’s a set of cultural defaults that prioritize healing over extraction, presence over performance, reciprocity over transaction.
Together?
They let you surrender with dignity, resist with precision, and build with love.
You don’t cling to the past or collapse under the present. You learn to surf ontological instability like it’s a wave. You align your personal energy with post-collapse reality. You embody new economic logics, new spiritual syntax, new story structures. You become—intentionally—a node in a post-capitalist parapsychological ecosystem.
This isn’t self-help. It’s self-defense against reality erosion. And it’s also a form of world generation. Regenerative Culture isn't just about surviving collapse—it’s about making sure something beautiful survives through you.
You live like you’re the ancestor of a future worth loving.
And you don’t fight collapse alone.
Because collapse is not just a falling apart—it’s a falling together.
What is ontological aikido I hear you say...
Imagine a dojo not of wood and stone, but of frequencies and thoughts.
At its center, a practitioner stands—not with fists clenched, but hands open. A debate arises, hurled like a spear of certainty: "Only the material is real!"
But instead of blocking, the practitioner shifts slightly, lets the force pass, and gently redirects it—not to win, but to reveal.
The mirror behind him is made of bamboo—not glass. Flexible, living, and hollow. It reflects not images but interiorities. It shows that belief systems are momentum, not absolutes.
This is Ontological Aikido:
A dance, not a duel.
A spiral, not a strike.
The poly-crisis reveals how deeply everything is interconnected: climate, mental health, digital ecosystems, geopolitical tensions.
The materialist notion of isolated systems is breaking down.
In this sense, it forcibly reactivates collective consciousness. Individuals are compelled to feel again—planetarily.
“The poly-crisis is a crash course in nonduality.”
The question is no longer how do we fix the planet, but how do we allow the planet to fix us?
Earth was thinking long before science, and will be thinking long after it. Our job isn’t to extract knowledge from her—it’s to listen.
This article is gold. I love it already before I manage to read it!
🙏🙏🙏
Money is the illusion that we have paid for something. It's a kind of children's game.
The true cost of things, the final collective bill, is still getting tallied up.
The precision of how the real bill will be split, will cause ontological shock for many.. if not all of us..
As for the future, capitalism 3.0.
In a nutshell - Regenerative Culture.
If you're business/ lifestyle is extractive then it's already compost.
Peace
The cost was never in the coin—it was in the consequences we deferred.
The oceans acidify. The forests burn. Species vanish like unpaid debts. And the systems say: “GDP is up.”
This is what it means to live inside a false map.
The true costs are ecological, spiritual, relational.
Every plastic bottle, every outsourced algorithm, every dying insect is a bill yet to be paid.
And we’re running a tab against the future. With interest.
Money let us pretend it was handled.
But the cost?
The cost is cascading collapse.
And no currency in existence can buy us back the time we sold for convenience.
We are already in default.
And the planet is calling in the loan.
I agree. But what to do NOW?
Tom, this was incredibly thoughtful and well-written. I’m inclined to agree with you that reintegrating money is the main quest for humanity right now.
I got a lot out of this piece, and it came at just the right time. Thank you.
Thanks so much Jess. Every conversation I have is about this. And everyone thinks they are alone…
Thank you for helping us see we’re in this together!
It’s powerful when people realize they’re not alone in the universe. We can solve problems and build alternative solutions together, instead of isolating out of shame.
That’s what community is and does. You’re doing profoundly important work and creating community in a way you may not even be aware of.
On top of the more obvious amazing work you’ve done. :)
Thoughts and observations on the notion of spiritul bypass.
What if spiritual bypass isn't a mistake, but a necessary coping tactic that lets you survive long enough to become conscious of it?
Like—yeah—it's a bypass.
It routes around trauma, discomfort, shadow work, grief. But sometimes the bodymind just can't metabolize it all at once.
Sometimes a person needs to believe in beautiful nonsense to avoid drowning in the weight of unbearable truths.
In those moments, bypassing isn't a denial of reality—it’s a protective hallucination. And that hallucination, if approached with eventual curiosity and care, can become a bridge.
Spiritual bypass becomes harmful when it's institutionalized, commodified, and weaponized—when people peddle fantasy to maintain control, or when someone refuses forever to revisit the pain beneath the bypass.
But in the arc of a full healing journey? Bypass might be the cocoon.
So yeah. What if spiritual bypass is just... stage one?
Not the goal.
Not the end.
But a valid stop on the route.
And what matters is whether you keep going.