I live my life as a hermit nun. Devoted to my spiritual and intellectual growth. I made up my deity many years ago, followed the nudges, and liked where She led me so I kept on going. If it stopped working, I'd quit and do something else, but so far, so good.
And one of the nudges that I have is to found a monastic order.
The Order of Paradox.
Paradox being the name of my made up goddess. Who paradoxically has influence in the real world, if only through my own actions, but increasingly through others who feel her reaching out to them when I introduce them to the concept of a made up goddess who is Everything and Nothing, the Cosmos Herself.
I know, I know...
Sounds totally whackadoo, but all of life is just us LARPing as whatever we think we're supposed to be, which got real boring real quick for me, so I just play with reality as if it's a fantasy game, and somehow, I ended up owning a house on two-and-a-half lots with pre-established gardens in front and back, and pond in back, and a woodstove in the living room. Cozy urban cottage in a poor neighborhood in a cheap city that's centered on a river that claimed me, and I told the river that it had to find a way for me to have what I wanted if it wanted me to stay, and almost two years later was when I moved into the house I was able to buy for $4000.
I have the monastic life of my dreams, and now my next step is to found a monastic Order for those who also want to establish their own monastic life centered not on religious dogma, but on curiosity and a desire for depth and freedom to explore the spiritual practices and teachings that call to them.
Because I know I'm not the only one.
I'm just one of the very rarest of people who has managed to build a sustainable life for myself with no other job than posting for my Village of Heretics - the name I've given to my audience.
The Order of Paradox will start as a digital monastery. Mixed gender. I personally call myself a Queer Heretic Nun and Contemplative Sorceress. I'll be doing workshops and recorded classes teaching various techniques I've learned and developed for meditation, contemplation, and the two types of sorcery I weave together - Contemplative Sorcery and Somatic Sorcery. Are they real? Don't know, don't care. Somatic Sorcery you physically feel in your body, but that doesn't mean it has any effect outside the body. However, shit gets weird when I do my sorcery, in good ways, but sometimes in freaky ways, so I just keep on doing it.
Sorcery, BTW, is not mandatory in the Order. If it's not for you, it's not for you. Instead, it's about finding the path for you and devoting your life to it, as much as you can, and sharing what you learn through your devotion with the world in some form or other.
Because for me, the purpose of a monastery is to be a devoted incubator of thought and creativity. Some of the greatest innovations in mental training and personal development come out of monasteries. Some of the greatest thinkers in history were trained by monks and nuns - Descartes is credited with "I think, therefore I am," but it was Teresa of Avila who first formulated the idea that the only thing one could be truly certain of is the existence of the thinking self.
But I am a Heretic. In the original sense of the word. "Able to choose" or "selective."
I don't like dogma.
I love the idea of religion. I love ritual - I can feel the phenomena called Collective Effervescence in a variety of group settings, but religious and spiritual settings are particularly potent. But their theology and social policies? Not really into any of them. Heretic.
I'm certain there are others like me. Who crave a more contemplative lifestyle, but can't just go join a monastery.
To begin, the Order of Paradox will be digital. There's a Discord that is currently mostly dead I need to revive and populate with some information. I'm also exploring setting it up as a DAO - that idea is still in very early exploration stages, but a DAO has the potential to help all members develop income streams that can support them while also supporting the Order to be able to enact various initiatives, like an education fund, and funds to buy housing for members and eventually buy land for a physical monastery, hermit village, and retreat center where members will get priority for events at cabins, but the public can also come for short-term stays, meditation retreats, etc.
The Order - right now me - won't teach dogma, it'll teach practices that can be used with any text or subject. Lectio Divina - divine reading - applied to fiction is FANTASTIC. Every word is a message from the Universe when you realize that both you and the writer are the Universe, too, communicating with itself. It gets real trippy to think about - go deep enough into a meditation and you'll come out of it understanding intimately that you ARE the Universe, so is everything and everyone you see around you - but then you come back to human and it's hard to distill the visceral nature of the experience in words without sounding like a loon.
I'm excited about the potential for starting what is likely to be the very first Onchain Digital Monastery. I'm very left-leaning - I identify as an anarchist, but I'm mostly annoyed with the chronically online left for their lack of pragmatism when dealing with the current systems. However, I see the potential in blockchain technology to enact some leftist principles in the founding and running of my monastic order.
I'm probably not going to make it a non-profit organization. One of the deities I work with is Juno Moneta - and by that, I mean I use their myths as a focal point for contemplative and mystical sessions and follow the "nudges" that I get while in those states. She is the Goddess of Money, guardian of the treasury of Rome, and as I've mentioned before, the goddess for whom "money" and "mint" is named. She's the one that nudged me to learn about crypto, which led to started to learn about DAOs, and now I'm spending the next year or so learning how to profit enough to get this whole thing started - or build enough connections with people who want to add monastic principles to their life, or even live full-time as a monastic practitioner to be able to fund it.
It's a big vision. Don't know if it will work or if there's even going to be enough interest to build and sustain it.
But I'm gonna keep following the nudges and see where they lead.
Gwynne
