Visceral Metaphysics

When I first started writing again on Instagram on the winter solstice of 2020, I didn’t have the knowledge I have now on subjects like cyclical history, political theory, etc. However, in the early days of Blood & Rain’s second iteration, I relied less on information and more on visceral readings of situations. In many cases, this served me well in terms of making content that captured attention whether it was through written work or recorded podcasts.

The podcast’s first episode itself was raw and intentionally raw to clarify. It was Old Calendar Christmas, (January 7th, 2021), and I was half way through a year below the poverty line averaging four hours of sleep thanks to overnight security work. While the circumstances themselves forced gritty behavior patterns, the solitude of lockdown and quiet nights behind a security desk lent themselves to a spectacularly contemplative existence. This was an existence that suited me well.

I don’t like half measures, and I don’t like being one-dimensional, so to have a stressor that develops toughness and an environment that develops thoughts was what I still consider to be perfection. Six months after this crucible, I was Christian once again.

I look back on this time, the first half of 2021 fondly. I met many great friends, and I’ve lost a fair few along the way. God prunes trees accordingly. I also wrote with an intensity and creativity that was unlike my peers whose writing I enjoyed and still enjoy very much. I don’t say this in regards as a hierarchical assessment but rather an understanding and classification. Many artists will introduce stressors or external substances to induce creative thought and expression, and I had a set of stressors in this case that was unique. These stressors greatly influenced my writing and recording, as some expressions were brutal, violent, and erratic due to my compromised state with others being viewpoints that could only be granted by extended periods of solitary contemplation.

After this period, the writing and recording fundamentally changed, as I shifted towards a return to combat sports due to gyms in California being open once again. I walked into a Muay Thai gym in San Francisco and had my greatest evolution as a martial artist to date. This was the case until I was forced out of San Francisco due to my occupation requiring me to check vaccination records. This saw me leave the Bay Area briefly for Austin in February of 2022 before driving up to Chicago for Valentine’s Day to meet a woman who would become my wife.

When I stayed in Chicago, the walls began to close in so-to-speak. I was thrust into a situation I wasn't entirely prepared for, and I both grew and suffered because of it. After two weeks of staying in Chicago meeting my wife in person for the first time, it became clear to me that I needed to stay in Chicago indefinitely. Two weeks later, she was bedridden and would need to be supported by myself through working a job with an arborist and soil scientist while founding an online strength and conditioning coaching business. It was also at this time that my wife and I began the road to Orthodox baptism.

During this period of time, my own training was greatly reduced as well as my creative output. The given circumstances I possessed not only granted me less time to think in solitude or engage with enriching stressors through martial arts, but I had to engage in a withdrawal from creative expression for the sake of catechism. “May I decrease, so God may increase.” This period of time from February to July of 2022 was my least active time creatively with most of my content being centered around Orthodox Christianity.

Running parallel to these circumstances began a personal interest of mine in political theory, cyclical history, and geopolitics having begun listening to the likes of Thomas777, Academic Agent, and J Burden, making me realize that much of the dynamics that make up our current world are ones that I had next to no education in. A caveat to this was reconciling the Orthodox Christian worldview with said dynamics. In listening to hours upon hours of the aforementioned creators’ content before engaging with their primary sources of reading, I had to discern what aspects of this world were purely Western in nature and what aspects were rooted in metaphysical dynamics that are essentially allowed by God to be threads that make up the cycles of our world until the eighth day.

From July 2022 until the conclusion of 2024, the bulk of my content was rooted in “noticings” and theories of geopolitical, metaphysical, and historical subject matter all from a very academic standpoint. This spanned my time in Chicago, England, and Poland having moved to England in October of 2023 and Poland in March of 2024. I knew a lot of people who were still writing on instagram who were making calls about subject matter they didn’t know much about strictly by “vibes,” and it showed the gaping hole in their education regarding the subject matter to make such calls. I looked back on many calls I had made with far less knowledge and quietly cringed. We can always learn more and understand better.

However, an education will indeed be rooted in an excellent base of history, science, mathematics, logic, and rhetoric, but oddly enough, that education rarely teaches them to synthesize logic with “receiving.” To see things viscerally: to look through things to see their rawest form, their most rudimentary core is to therefore receive what something is in actuality as opposed to what it is presenting itself as. What is paradoxical about this however, is many are not calibrated to receive on matters they have no education in, yet many somehow get the core of discernment right depending on the individual.

Equipped with a certain level of education and a steady practice of seeing through things, one can begin to see an electric world of metaphysics unfold. One can walk through a city and receive what it is at its core and receive the forces and circumstances that have made it. One can see a people and see what has moulded their features and their biospirit. One can differentiate martial capacity from malicious intent. One can see into himself and see whether or not there is a spiritual struggle perpetuating from his being or a reaching for worldly weaknesses. One can begin to understand where it is he belongs.

It is vital to understand the environments that we come into contact with from a metaphysical standpoint, so we understand what is quietly moulding us whether we resist these forces or embrace them. It is vital to understand the environments that have moulded us in the past to understand what it is we are whether through blood, upbringing, cycles of time, choice through action, or choice by opting into an environment. It is even more important to then understand what it is that God has placed in our lives as constants, what He’s placed as variables, what has deviated from His plan (life decisions made in sin), and the identity of a Saint that He has placed on every soul.

When it comes to identity, there is what has been, what is, and what can be. When it comes to identity, there is what is in alignment with God’s understanding of one’s self, what is against that understanding, and what is neutral.

There are facts about ourselves we have no say in such as our lineage, our raised culture, and our upbringing that cannot be refuted. To refute these things is like fighting the sun. There are facts about ourselves that we have moulded by choice such as profession or personal praxis of some kind, but even these choices can stem from sentiments that are originally environmental. There are also the decisions in the future that will mould us into something different or something more in the future.

To use myself as an example, I am European blood with Basque/Iberian on one side and Italian and Basque/Iberian on the other side. I am culturally American, more specifically, Californian, more specifically, San Franciscan. I was raised as an only child in a nuclear family isolated away from any extended family members. I was raised in a private schooling system that was predominantly East Asian until I went to a Catholic high school that was comprised of rich old stock Anglo, Italian, and Irish trust fund types followed by an Evangelical high school that was comprised of simpler, nouveau riche peoples of the same stock.

What has this made me? This has made me a man prone to seeking intense and poetic things in the case of the blood, a man seeking freedom in the case of American culture, a man of detached contemplation due to Californian culture, a man who seeks the highest capacity for theory and innovation in all things due to the San Franciscan culture, a loner as a default setting due to being an isolated child, a man who was deeply influenced by the East Asian outlook on life from his early schooling, a streak for being a spiteful vagabond from my first high school, and a man who understands he is easily bored from his second high school.

None of these things are anything I can refute. They are not worth resisting.

It is difficult to understand what decisions were made in alignment with God’s will for anything that has occurred before baptism. These understandings are as murky as the understandings of a foreshadowed savior being spoken of in pre-Christian European storytelling traditions. There are certainly clues, but to understand God’s will in these times is far less clear.

However, when it comes to a time after one’s baptism, one can understand what decisions were in alignment with God’s will as well as what decisions were not and how they were redeemed. The remaining choices have shaped every baptized Christian from a neutral standpoint that can later be used by God down the line. You can take two Orthodox Christians who go to the same church, follow the path of potential Sainthood in all of their decisions, and not only can these decisions have a great degree of variance, but the remaining decisions can have a great degree of variance in regards to moulding their identities. One man can choose to spend his time after work in an intensive study of a craft like sculpting while the other can spend his time after work learning a new language. The former will likely have a more grounded understanding of patience and a greater capacity for presence, and the latter will see life through a different lens crafted by the elements that made up that language itself. These neutral decisions have also shifted identity.

Decisions for the future for Christians however, have a hierarchy. The first is a decision of whether something is or is not God’s will. This can only be understood through prayer, patience, and self-denial. The second stage of decision-making is the remaining choice of what one wants to be in addition to this identity as told by God. These decisions are ones of action, thought, consumption, company, and environment. This becomes more complex when one is married with children.

I pray daily to determine where God’s place for myself and my future family lies. San Francisco, Chicago, Poland, and Spain are all candidates, all for different reasons. If there is one place God truly wants us in, we will be there. If it is left up to us, then my wife and myself have to ask what we want our children to be. San Francisco and Chicago would make them culturally American with a great degree of cultural variance between those two cities. Poland and Spain would see the American culture in our bloodlines disappear through our children, opting for an increased alignment with their ancestral homelands.

Things that are a bit clearer with what I want my children to be outside of locale. I want my children in a strong Orthodox Christian community, going to an Orthodox classical school, speaking the languages of their heritage, as healthy as possible, with a high proficiency for martial arts and physical culture. Beyond this, what will emerge is their respective identities in Christ and their own neutral preferences that can be bolstered if my wife and I are properly paying attention to them. We’re praying the decision of locale is up to God, but we certainly have our hopes regarding the matter.

In the interim until then, I'm reaching a homeostasis I’ve desired for a long time. Traveling has been very enriching and inspiring over the course of the past fourteen months. We had the privilege of seeing Paris and Rouen for our honeymoon, Cornwall, Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford, and Nottingham while we lived in England, and Serbia, Bosnia, and Czechia while living in Poland. I also had the privilege of seeing Malaysia and the Netherlands due to having the honor of being a groomsman in a wedding involving a dear friend of mine and getting to see my co-writer, Mercatores in a long layover on the way back. But all of this travel has prevented the roots for legitimate growth I’ve been seeking. I’ll be living in Thailand for three months with life once again finally revolving around martial arts before a quick trip to Japan and an ultimate settling in Chicago until further notice.

While travel has been a joy, it has prevented the roots and stability required to further develop as a young Christian, as a martial artist, and as a writer. A nomadic life is not a life for the Orthodox novice.

However, when it comes to writing and creation, it’s clear that a full circle to visceral expression while increasingly self-educating is the only legitimate road forward.

In regards to environment, I’m approaching the previous conditions that produced previous leaps in creative work and capacity as a martial artist. So I can only imagine there will be a return to the previous influences on content with an increased knowledge of subject matter. A strong Church community, minimal lost time, a space to think, and sparring partners to sharpen myself against are what grant an existence that suits me best. Travel should be in smaller doses for the perfect amount of “stressor” conducive to creative inspiration and decompression.

What matters for most however, is to see with more than just your eyes.

Pray to God to enlighten your understanding, and see through all things.

From there, you’ll know your identity in Christ with increasing intensity, and you’ll better understand what decisions you have make to be moulded into what God intends to be and you want to be in that order.

-Arthur Constantine