Stories
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- The solution. Gurdjieff provides practical instruction. Sees all the traps. Calls out that we cannot do this alone. - Gurdjieff framework for picking values? - The meta-observation: almost like the point of life is as a moral test. That anyt...
The Mirror Room Collection
A collection of short stories about identity and becoming.
The Mirror Room Collection - Audiobook
Please read the print version. The audiobook is currently many revision behind.
Observations on the Sleep of Seekers
Draft. Practical advice in response to The Mirror Room collection.
The Reader's Crisis
A reader confronts how her progressive political ideology has inadvertently become a framework for avoiding personal responsibility and agency by attributing all constraints to systemic forces beyond individual control. Through rereading philosophical stories about choice and self-creation, she recognizes that acknowledging structural oppression doesn't require abandoning the recognition that individuals still make meaningful choices within those constraints, and that personal transformation and…
The Paradox of Becoming
Authentic selfhood emerges paradoxically through repeated choosing rather than self-discovery, requiring individuals to commit to becoming themselves before knowing who they are, a process marked by anguish and freedom from external certainties. The self is not a fixed entity to be uncovered but an ongoing task that demands continuous choice and responsibility, renewed again and again without rational guarantees or systematic blueprints.
The Meeting
Two strangers meet by chance and discover they share a profound existential crisis: one has mastered self-discipline but lost sight of what to be disciplined toward, while the other has seen through false identities but can't decide who to become when everything seems possible. An older woman interrupts their conversation to challenge them both, arguing that they've acquired powerful tools—consistency and psychological freedom—but are using philosophical uncertainty as an excuse for paralysis…
The Mirror Room
Sarah encounters a mysterious mirror room that shows her countless alternative versions of herself—a capitalist, a soldier, a mother, a lawyer—each representing different identities she could have adopted but rejected in favor of her progressive activist persona. The experience reveals that her carefully constructed identity, like all identities, is simply accumulated constraints handed down by society and others rather than something authentically chosen, and she realizes that true freedom…
The Consistent Man
Consistency is not about perfection but about deliberately choosing principles and honoring them daily, even when difficult or costly. Through a gradual process of small commitments—waking at 6 AM, keeping promises, and operating from chosen principles—Daniel transforms from an impulsive person driven by momentary impulses into someone reliable and free, discovering that this integrity of self actually requires less mental energy and proves invaluable during genuine crises. The story argues that…