Aella & CJ Sittin in a Tree
Added 2025-12-30 14:36:01 +0000 UTC[Recorded October 2025 post my SlutCon lecture on Sex, Eros & Seduction]
Aella is a writer, blogger, sex worker and general internet legend. She is a major figure in the rationalist community and is known for her mind bending dives into kink, psychedelics, Christian fundamentalism and being overly sincere about every edgy.
You can find her at her infamous site Knowingless, her modern cutting edge substack (https://aella.substack.com/), or on her controversial ever updated Twitter acct.
We met through our mutual work on status, and I discovered that a large chunk of the San Francisco rationalist community enjoys my work.
Aella and I discuss our mutual studies into the machinations of social status, Beauty vs. Truth , and the virtues and vices of Chat GPT.... TTHen we unexpectedly SPIRAL into the unspeakable depths of intelligible reality. All while constantly returning to the topic of Taylor Swift, someone neither of us are particularly interested in or knowledgeable about.
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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. Reflecting refocusing, pray you are doing the same.
I'm letting things pass through me, trying to see the next year of videos, music, touring.
I am very inspired by the community that has built around what I've yeeted into the void.
Appreciate you all for appreciating my authenticity for 5 years.
Comments
I feel like the thing CJ is actually trying to say about their presence as public figure, and how they conducted themself on their lecture tour (withholding a greater amount of potent expression in favor of keeping things more "correct", though many a little too grounded or emotionally distant) is about the fear of not wanting to get "carried away by themself, and taking everyone else with them". That feels genuinely important to me, and I think I understand what they're getting at. The problem is that speaking with authority and conviction can very easily slide into preaching. And when we hear the word *Preacher*, we usually imagine someone moralizing at others in a punishing way, someone who believes they ought to bend reality to their will through a kind of emotional violence and disregard for others' interiority. Because of modern secular associations with religious preaching, we often picture a hellfire-and-brimstone kind of dynamic, where the person in the preaching position implies that if you don’t do things exactly the way they prescribe, then you are somehow wrong, fallen, or inferior. Undeserving of God's grace. This is a model of influence based on brutality and complete domination. Similarly, if someone has cult-leader charisma, they can make people feel like they ought to ingratiate themselves to that person because *they* are the One Arbiter of Truth. In that sense, they’re replacing God, which is exactly what CJ was pointing to as a Profane Act. With cult leaders, the danger isn’t just authority; it’s that they aren’t pointing toward something greater than themselves. *They* want to *be* the God. They want worship directed at them, not at a greater Reality they'd like to build and give to the rest of the world. I think that’s what CJ is talking about when they talk about the Profane. CJ wants to fully commit to speaking their ideas in way that feels potent, true, and moving, because there is real belief and urgency behind what they want to communicate. But I think they also understand that when people feel lost, when they’re grappling with an existential problem they’ve never had language for before, and suddenly someone gives them one, it’s incredibly easy to latch onto that answer with desperation. Once someone feels that relief, they can often cling to that thing they've discovered with a kind of fervency. They want the person who gave them that insight to tell them exactly what to do next, because there's a fragility to feeling like you've finally found some Light in this Darkness you might have been wandering around in. And someone less honorable — someone without guilt or awareness about their possible cult-leader tendencies — might be more than happy to step into that role. They might say, "Follow this formula, my formula that I figured out all by myself, because I’m special, because I’m basically God, and then you too can be saved." Crucially, *they* are the savior in that story, not the Reality framework they spent all this time and effort studying and translating so that it could be understandable to other people. But wanting to be told what to think is, unfortunately, a very human impulse. I think a lot of people today lack what I’d call spiritual literacy. CJ didn’t use those exact words, but that seems to be what they're circling around. CJ has a high degree of spiritual literacy themself, and they're looking at a world that has very little of it and is in desperate need of it, and they know this is a real, valuable thing they can offer. And so when people finally receive that kind of clarity, it’s deeply relieving. But that relief also creates the clinging and fragility I mentioned before, and CJ wants to be careful with that human fragility. They want to show people that they can hold this power, too. At the same time, I understand how frustrating it probably is, as well. Instead of approaching these insights with curiosity and a basic sense of agency, instead of asking how to apply them to their own lives in a way they can design themselves, many people would rather just be told how to live because they don't think they're capable of more. They want someone else’s blueprint. I understand feeling disappointed by that. Maybe even a little disgusted (though that might be a bit strong of a word). Still, I also deeply value the experience of designing one’s own life in this way. That’s what Quality feels like to me: living inside my own life fully and completely, because I've paid close attention to what actually makes me feel alive and I make efforts to continuously cultivate this energy, instead of just copying someone else’s model and hoping their formula produces the same result for me. I think this also ties into power and status discussion that was also flowing around everything else. Spiritual literacy is a kind of skill that’s in high demand right now. That gives it power, but we live in a culture where power is almost always framed as something used to dominate, bludgeon, or extract from others without reciprocity, never as something used to heal or given back to others. But power should be stewardship. Power should be used to bring more Life and Aliveness into the world, and I think CJ is wary about wielding it for this exact reason, but this is exactly what makes them a good leader. One more thing stood out to me: There was a moment toward the end of the podcast where CJ basically says "I've always been so obsessed with finding those moments where 'You're *really* alive now'". They talk about wanting that feeling of vibration, the same vibration both them and Aella noticed emerging in their conversation, and they say they want their life to feel like that all the time. That vibration, that sense of Aliveness, Beauty, Truth, all of these the words we reach for when we're trying to describe this feeling, points to a visceral experience that I think everyone is searching for in some way. We have so many names for it because it’s also just the Numinous. CJ wants that experience of the Numinous as much as possible, and so do I. And there’s a pain in not being able to feel that way all the time, though I think it’s inevitable that we can’t. But, as I said before, I think a truly Quality Life is one where you spend as much time as possible continuously cultivating and attending to that feeling. That vibrating quality feels like a *dance* between you and the rest of Reality — a sense of grace, power, and effortlessness. It’s a way of moving through the world that feels confident, intelligent, playful, sensual, and wise. When we feel that vibration, it’s often because we’re in a dance with other people, or with a place, or an idea. We want Reality itself to feel alive in that way. A place that never runs out of Possibility or Mystery. Of course, we always have to come to rest eventually, and I think that's why we can't live in a constant state Poetic Rapture, even though we may crave to. Poetic Rapture is a highly active state of being, and even the most spiritually rigorous need to come to rest at some point. We do live in finite human bodies, after all. And I think that’s what CJ was trying to describe using their hands as a visual reference at that one part — that desire for things to be mobile, dynamic, shifting, and then, for a moment, to crystallize. You could call that a state of rest, but it’s also a peak, a moment of form emerging into it's Highest Completeness. And then, inevitably, we want that crystallization to dissolve again, because we want movement and dance to return. The aliveness comes from the dance itself. And that dance can manifest in so many ways in how we interface with Reality — through a craft we dedicate ourselves to, a place we visit, through charisma and conversational play with other people, through physical activity, sport, or movement. It might be literal dance, or a martial art, or something else entirely. We all have, or haven’t yet found, the thing (usually multiple things) that gives us that sense of Pure Aliveness. But I think the dance is especially important in how we relate to other people. That’s what wielding knowledge of status well feels like to me. When CJ talks about understanding how human status dynamics work as reading the Dark Grimoire — Lovecraftian knowledge that, once seen, can’t be unseen, and you’re not even sure it’s entirely good. I understand what they mean. It changes you. But the ideal version of having that knowledge is being able to use it to dance with Reality rather than dominate it. I think that’s essentially what the concept of Lila describes — something I remember strongly from the "Six Shapes of God" video — the idea of the that the fundamental drive of the Universe is to play with itself. True charisma, and therefore power in a Status sense, comes from versatility. The dance is a willingness to be flexible, responsive, and adaptive rather than cold and static. And to be versatile, you have to let go of the fear of friction, uncertainty, and the possibility of Surrender, and I think that’s something that can only be learned through time and practice. This comment is already really long, so I won’t try to unpack how one actually cultivates confidence around friction and uncertainty in status interactions. But I do think that’s what that vibrating Aliveness really is. And I understand CJ's need — their desire, their obsession — with chasing it and cultivating it as much as they can, because I feel it, too. I also want to Dance as much as I can before my time to come to Eternal Rest inevitably arrives.
Madraykin
2026-01-06 06:01:29 +0000 UTCVideo title notwithstanding, I was not prepared for such ~c.h.em.i.s.t.r.y.~
Sean Yagla
2026-01-06 03:34:15 +0000 UTC
