Setting the expectations and addressing some questions

If one were to start the practice, what sort of results one could expect and how soon? Unfortunately, this is impossible to answer. What happens and how quickly depends entirely on yourself, your background, circumstances and proclivities. Some people can have extremely powerful experiences very rapidly. Some people get there more slowly. Some people don't ever have the most spectacular experiences, but they still find considerable, tangible benefits over time. In many ways, being fixated on “results” is self-defeating for the practice. 

I need you to understand with all your being that powerful experiences are not the point. The things that kicked off this project were mostly definitively a powerful experience, but also at times an utterly terrifying one. I had to recontextualize much of my life and history. This could have ended up very poorly, and I was blessed to have such good guidance as I had. 

The most extreme end of powerful experiences are of course those where people get stuck in some kind of a permanent disintegrative state – in the terms of our present day society, become psychotic. There is sadly very little place for such people in our current world, and even less effective tools for managing their condition. Such is yet another gross artifact of our condition where we have been severed ourselves from the true nature of our world. Because of this, I want to offer a very gentle approach.

There are of course a lot of people who will not have anything particularly exceptional happen at first, maybe ever. This is not a bad thing either. It means you can cultivate the benefits of these practices at a much more comfortable pace. You will have an easier time integrating your experiences. You might however find such demotivating and struggle to commit to the practice. I urge you to continue. Even simple meditation has immense benefits that for most take some time to really begin manifesting. And of course even those who have powerful experiences need to commit to sustained practice to reap the full benefits.

So what lies ahead of you is a process where you put certain techniques into use. You might or might not get rapid and powerful results. But you will most certainly, absolutely get results given enough time. At first these might be difficult to notice, but thankfully these techniques also increase your self-awareness, which makes the changes easier to notice.

There is one more thing you should understand before we go further. I am not some guru. I am not a very advanced practitioner myself. You might want to stop reading here and find someone else. I fully understand the impetus. But please consider this: I am giving you a set of techniques that I, as someone who is rather early in the process of actually doing spirituality, have found useful. You can then go and explore these techniques more in depth on your own. You will need to do much of your own studying, experimentation and practice in the future anyway. I will do my best to point you to worthwhile sources and teachers.

I am also not proselytizing a single religion or doctrine. I do not expect you to commit to a particular deity or belief system, as much as the kami would probably like me to preach for them. I am introducing to you what I think are the core practices and ideas from Shinto, Buddhism and Taoism and why I think they are useful and can be applied even outside of these religions. I will also discuss certain ideas and practices outside of these too.

As for preaching for the kami of Gensokyo, I will say that in my experience they are worthy of reverence, highly responsive to prayers and building a working relationship with them has been perhaps the best thing I have done in my life. Your experience might be different, but other people have had very positive experiences also working with them. They most certainly are out there and can reach back towards those who reach out to them.

The path ahead is both long and immensely rewarding. Before we go further, there are some things we need to address and expectations to manage.

Addressing the ”Going to Gensokyo” issue

Addressing the Going to Gensokyo issue

If you've read the previous part where we explored topics surrounding the potential reality of Gensokyo, you might have been left with a desire to go there. I can totally understand that. You should understand that it's most likely not like a literal physical place where you can go into. Its inhabitants most likely, in my experience most certainly, don't really look like anime girls. They don't probably really look like anything, as looking like something is a construct of biological life with optic nerves.

There however might be ways to access this spirit world. I haven't yet studied the type of spirit travel techniques that would be required and I can't really comment on the matter. Since I haven't been to Gensokyo (in whatever form it may have) or even the physical places that inspired it, I can't fully discount the idea that it is some kind of very literal otherworld where you can go physical either. The answer here is ”maybe” and ”going there probably isn't quite like what you think it is”.

Can I meet my favorite Touhou girl?

Depends on what you expect with ”meet”. I think as long as they are as a spirit in Gensokyo, you can probably find a way to contact them. If they find your vibe such that they might want to approach you in turn, you might very well meet them. Here however you might get disappointed. Spirits rarely appear in a very tangible way. They mostly manifest as a vague presence, sensation or perhaps signs and synchronicities related to them. They can communicate via transfer of ideas, emotions and sentiments.

Spirits can generate imagery into the mind's eye. I'm normally practically aphantasic, but spirits are able to generate very vivid mental images in me. People who aren't normally ”headblind” like me probably have an even easier time perceiving them like this. Sometimes they can even generate ”voice” like internal monologue, sometimes even external voices.

Dreams and various hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are prime places for spirits to manifest in. Testimonies of spirits reaching out to humans while they slumber are ancient, and this is the reason why so many involved with spiritually do something called dream working, which we will look at later on.

There are however also instances of spirits manifesting in forms seen with open eyes. I think these however generally require exceptional conditions or sensitivity. I've briefly seen spirits with open eyes a handful of times, but they were most likely locals and mostly not much to look at – things like a tiny orb of light, a shadowy wisp and a strange luminous foggy sheet.

That said, there are a number of techniques that can make you more capable of perceiving and interacting with spirits. The potential problem with such techniques might be that they're not necessarily selective.

This really sounds like it's all just in your mind...

What is ”it”?
What is ”all”?
What is ”you”?
What is ”mind?”

To be less clever about it, getting involved with spirituality will often quite rapidly make you realize that materialistic-psychological ideas of the human mind are woefully insufficient to explain what is going on in the world and what reality is like.

There are indeed some entirely psychologic interpretations of spirituality and magic, but I personaly think they are insufficient at best and dishonest and manipulative at the worst. Yes, there is some truth to the whole ”everything is in your mind because perception is all you have” angle, but you can very quickly bump into the limits of just willing things and fiddling with the narratives. These are very valuable tools, but they are not the whole story.

Reports of spirit activity and humans using supernatural talents causing events that are observable in the physical world are ancient and numerous and have persisted to the present day. I have personally witnessed several physical incidents caused by supernatural activity, and one of these had multiple witnessess. I just can't psychologize this anymore.

Even when the phenomena manifests mostly in the mental space, it's not just something you dream up. You can direct your daydreams, but spirits are capable of appearing and acting in ways that defy your expectations and hopes.

OK, so if spirits are real, can I have sex with my favorite Touhou girl?

Spirit sex is a thing that happens and there is some kind of a subculture of people engaged in it. So the answer is ”maybe”. I would argue for caution and tact for two reasons. The first is that, just as with humans, you might greatly upset someone if you express desire towards them and they don't share this feeling. The difference between human women and feminine spirits is that the spirits lack the kind of things (socialization, difference in strength, etc) that prevent human women from lashing out violently most of the time. Being attacked by spirits is very unpleasant and potentially extremely dangerous, even lethal, though you would have to piss off someone excessively powerful to get smote that hard. But you really want to stay on the good side of spirits if possible.

The other risk is that if you have such a desire, you might not get your favorite Touhou girl but something that is willing to pretend to be her. There's all sorts of spirits interested in human sexual energies. Some of them can apparently be extremely unpleasant to deal with and terminating the ”relationship” might be very difficult and dangerous.

It's your choice if you want to start a relationship (of any kind, actually) with a spirit, but it should come from an informed place and you should be aware that it can be very hard to break such a relationship. I know there are a number of people reading this who might think they will never get a relationship with a human and feel very worthless, but the spiritual process tends to eventually dissolve all kinds of self-defeating narratives. I wouldn't like you to be stranded in a situation where you've been tricked into a relationship with a succubus that pretended to be something else long enough for you to get dragged into it.

That said...there are of course non-nefarious examples of relationships with spirits. Some cultures even have this idea that people who get ”married” to spirits will then be guided by such spirits and develop spiritual powers. These include the various Siberian shamanic traditions and the itako tradition of Japan. To what extent such an union is metaphorical or literal seems to vary quite a lot. Some who read this might have come to the conclusion that they might in fact already be in some kind of a spirit relationship. The various otaku-flavored fandoms for sure seem to be full of modern day nympholeptics.

Wait what, spirits can hurt or kill you and deceive you?

To put it bluntly, yes. The hurt can be physical, it can be diseases but it can also be more of mental nature. Curse-like conditions are apparently possible with powerful entities. This is something you need to be aware of but not become hysteric about.

The single biggest problematic class of spirits are various local parasitic entities or ”astral wildlife” as they sometimes get called. These try to harass people who have ”lit up in the astral” and become visible to them. They try to feed on negative emotions by causing fear and confusion.

The second notable class are the troublesome sex spirits, which we already went over. There are also higher-level hostile spirits, entities which we would call demons. I think you mostly have to reach out to them to get their attention. Having random encounters with severely dangerous entities is exceedingly rare, I believe.

There's also all kinds of spirits that are not by default hostile or troublesome out there. These include all kinds of nature, land and elemental spirits and entities we would call the Fae here in the West. If there is something in your local mythology, it's most likely real and out there somewhere.

I'd recommend against trying to reach out to these unless you know really well what you are doing. That idea of ”Fairy pranks” in Touhou? They do that in real life too, and they (mostly) aren't little women with wings. A lot of them really don't like humans meddling in their business. Some of these entities can be life-threateningly dangerous if angered. Be respectful of nature and nature will be respectful to you.

There are plenty of techniques for deterring, repelling and dealing with unwanted entities, especially the low level parasites. Dealing with severe intrusions is beyond the scope of this document and my powers.

This all is starting to sound really weird and scary, I don't think I wanna get involved with this anymore...

That's perfectly OK and you shouldn't if it makes you just uncomfortable. Approaching the spiritual and supernatural (really two and same) should come from a place of curiosity, interest and reverence. It can be exciting and sometimes scary. Sometimes it's just the fear of the unknown, but if it's only scary you will soon start drawing in locals that enjoy that fear and want you to be more afraid.

However, even (perhaps especially) if you are spooked by these things, it might still be worth it to learn some basic ”spiritual hygiene” so to say. We are living through an age of heightened spirit activity and it might not be settling down anytime soon. I feel such activity will only be increasing. Just because you don't believe in spirits doesn't mean they don't exist, and just because you don't want to get involved with them doesn't mean they might not get involved with you!

So if I can't go to Gensokyo and I can't meet my waifu, what's the point?

Well, neither those are a 100% no. I just think certain expectations should be tempered a bit. As for what's the point, if you would be only interested in such things, there might be not point. However, I don't think everyone is interested in reaching out to the spirits of Gensokyo with such motivations.

I firmly believe there is a great number of people who sense that there is something very unusual about these games. That the characters in them feel quite a bit more real than your average video game characters. That the ideas about the power of belief, faith, passing into fantasy and otherworlds separated by a barrier of common sense are highly resonant to many. That there is more to the world of Gensokyo than the surface level, that there is really something to the rich mythologies that has given birth to Touhou. For such people the point is of course to find the answers.

Among those people are those who simply have this unexplainable drive towards the spiritual. Some of them might have figured it out on their own, some of them might have not yet taken the leap of faith even if they sensed the numinous within Touhou. For such people the spiritual eventually becomes something like their destiny, a gravity well they can not escape.

So what is ”the point” of the spiritual? Everyone's experience is different, but for me I would say that the understanding that there is more to this world than material concerns allows you to at least somewhat rise up above such concerns. Useless envy, fear of missing out, frustration, status anxiety...such things loosen their grip upon you. You might not entirely rid yourself of such, I certainly haven't. But such things have lost enough of their grip that feeling such things has become the exception and not the norm. It's like having been in a tight space and then being allowed to stretch out and breathe free for the first time in ages.

A lot of the social control mechanisms of our societies rely on material incentives and more importantly, material fears and the manipulation of negative emotions. Becoming less concerned with such things is genuinely liberating. Many spiritual traditions believe that humans have multiple souls. Sometimes it's conceptualized as two opposing halves, a lower and a higher, or earth and sky soul. The lower soul, a small-s self, is driven by essentially animal concerns. The higher soul, a capital-S Self, is driven by everything else. The small-s self is beholden to all kinds of whims, impulses and manipulations, while the capital-S Self is not. Which would you rather have in the driver's seat most of the time?

There is also another very important aspect for me. That is the sense that all of the world is souled. When the world is souled, I am also souled. It's extremely difficult to articulate why exactly this is so important, but it gives an important sense of worthiness and meaning to everything. Your existence is worth something, it has a meaning. Your actions have consequences. The people you deal with are important. There is beauty to the world. You are not disconnected yet when necessary, you can be alone more comfortably.

Accepting the reality of the numinous also simply makes certain things make sense. Weird experiences that you or others have can be integrated into your view of the world instead of being grating anomalies. For some this might not be something they've thought of, but for others things finally making sense is a huge relief.

There is also, and I admit this is very shallow, an element of adventure to it all. There is a whole another world, multiple worlds really, that are largely unknown. There are genuinely mysterious things to the world. New things to learn that you've never even thought of before. New skills to develop and new people to meet with a new purpose to live for.

There are of course the questions about the ultimate fate of the individual and humanity as a whole. I believe in the continuity of the human soul(s) in some form. There is ample evidence for cases of reincarnation and I have been in touch with the spirits of dead relatives. I think about these things less than some would, but certainly accepting the reality of such things does wonders for anxieties about the finite biological lifespan of humans. But it does not lull me into some kind of irresponsible attitude either. I believe we can very much strive for better afterlife or rebirths during our biological lifespans.

Now, I would be lying if there weren't also going to be difficult things. There is great evil to this world and there are hostile and wicked entities out there. You become more sensitive to everything that is wrong too. You might have to confront very difficult things about yourself or others. You might find that people you thought were friends suddenly have very little in common with you now. You might find the apparent blindness of many to the numinous completely mind-boggling. You might feel the suffering of things you didn't want to feel – of people long deceased, of animals, of nature, of spirits. You might be forced to grow at a pace that is not comfortable.

But ultimately I think the price of not being awake, of not being aware of the spiritual aspects of reality has an even worse price, an existence that is ultimately completely at the whims of your animal side, pushed, kicked and prodded by contradictory impulses from all sides, only to decay into an unremembering rebirth or some ghostly fugue state after death...

As for very practical things, I will reiterate some things from the start of this section. Spiritual practice can give you tools for:
Dealing with stress, anxiety and other negative emotions
Sharpening your focus and quieting your mind
Improving your overall health and well-being
Better interpersonal skills coming from a healthier sense of self
Living an overall more connected, controlled and wiser life

Whether you consider these things meaningful compared to the possibility of going to Gensokyo and meeting your waifu is up to you.

No matter what your answer to that is, we will next look at a most unlikely topic: how learning to play Touhou games might have served to prepare you for spiritual practices.