Hello everyone, and welcome to the final episode of Deep Love for Wealth (or “Deep Love for Playing Wealth,” depending on context, but “Wealth” sounds more natural for a finance/self-help podcast). I’m JS Jingshu. As for what the future blog or other content will be, I’ll save that for the next episode—the first episode of the new podcast. Since this is the last one, I’m just going to go crazy. I’m giving up on the “Lin Blogger’s face” (a reference to a specific persona/brand) anyway; I’m not doing it anymore. So, I want to say something that I’ve always wanted to say: “The Academic Cat is Toxic.” Today, I don’t want to play around with non-judgmental, or, sigh, benevolent speculation in these mind-body contexts. Because if I hold that idea, of course, it’s not wrong, but my words just won’t make sense, and this sentence will never be fully articulated.

So, today is a very subjective, very emotional episode. This is my background. If you want to say that what she’s talking about definitely has good aspects, well, I agree, but if I keep going back and forth like this, I just can’t produce this episode today. So, just think of it as me freaking out, or maybe even chasing traffic, or maybe you just want to eat some gossip, listen to some chatter—that’s fine. In this episode, I’ll first talk about some phenomena I’ve observed in the Academic Cat’s community. But more importantly, I hope you listen to this episode with the following questions in mind. First, what is a toxic thought? Sigh, how do we define which statement is toxic and which is relatively healthy? Second, why are cults or organizations with extreme, bold ideas so attractive? Third, why does the community easily develop a pathological attachment? And how do we prevent it? Fourth, what is the historical, social, and economic context of the mind-body teachings we are currently exposed to? Have you ever thought about this? And fifth, how do we engage in independent thinking? Since this episode is primarily meant to encourage independent thinking, don’t believe everything I say; you must make your own judgment.

I even feel like if you, sigh, truly want to think independently, you’re curious, and you go, but you still spend 999 [currency unit] to join the Academic Mom’s community, or you spend the current 9999, or whatever to buy her course, it doesn’t matter. Because you are truly making a judgment based on your own personal experience. If you have money, you can do that too. Right, let me give you another background point. I also thought that since I’m discussing a larger topic today—the mind-body industry—which we will talk about later in the context of the capitalist and consumerist chain—do I need to single out the Academic Cat? And should I just talk about the industry to appear more rational, objective, and neutral? But I pondered it, if I only talk about it that way, first, it will be quite dry. Second, my thoughts on this industry actually come from my experience in the Academic Cat’s community. And there are so many things I actually want to express, but due to friendship, or because I want to be a spiritual blogger, I haven’t expressed them.

So, I also guess that many of the friends in her community have similar thoughts. So, I dare to express some of my very subjective ideas, hoping that through this method, I can make the topic I want to discuss today more concrete—it’s a process of non-self-censorship. Okay, so we have several chapters today. I’ll list them: Chapter One is titled, “Why I Say This Community is Toxic,” which is my personal experience in the Academic Cat’s Planet Knowledge Circle community. Let me first talk about the historical background. I met Academic Cat around 2018 after being introduced by Teacher Zhang Xiaoyu. At first, we clicked really well, and quickly became good friends. During that time, we basically communicated daily on WeChat, sharing a common hobby, and reading some very… well, mind-body related books. At that time, I felt it was a mutually supportive relationship, because, well, the Academic Cat wasn’t like it is today, where everything seems to have an answer. We would ask each other questions, and I would ask him questions. It was in that state, and we discussed a book called The Guide to Living in the Present.

At that time, Academic Cat was a very precious friend to me. He supported me during a very difficult period in my life, and we went out and played together. But around 2019, we started to drift apart because I noticed he began to move towards the path of “氪金” (paying to level up/spending heavily). “Kè jīn” means spending a lot of money—buying luxury goods or going to high-end hotels, in short, high-end consumption. At the same time, he started focusing on the Zero Limit school of thought.

For those who don’t know, I’ll explain Zero Limit later, but generally, the Zero Limit method isn’t my thing. At first, I didn’t criticize it much; I just tolerated it. “Yeah, I don’t like it; it’s too simple and too brainless.” I didn’t really like this school of thought. More importantly, as I slowly interacted with him, I started to feel a strange sensation: we were no longer in a relationship of equal friends.

Because it seemed like every time we chatted, whether sitting down to eat or online, he seemed to know everything, understand everything, and could constantly output information, output his ideas, his understanding, and try to inspire you, guide you, and make your mindset relax. How is it? If these things were teacher and student, if both of us agreed to enter such a hierarchical relationship, then of course, you can constantly listen to a teacher explain things to you. But if it’s friends, I think the foundation of friendship is that we are all human—that we are all flawed, that we all have weaknesses, and that we all have questions. I think this is a basic commonality of being human. But when chatting with Academic Cat, the more and more I felt like he was a teacher, an old soul. He seemed to have very few questions or vulnerabilities. He rarely spoke about any doubts or uncertainties he had. Of course, in his community, he would be even more subtle, talking about his, say, his romantic experiences, which we will discuss later. But overall, he was someone who wasn’t very… well, who wasn’t showing weakness, who didn’t have any confusion. Slowly, I started to find it boring.

But in 2022, I saw many posts on his official account about “氪金,” about how many people, under his guidance, had some very stimulating experiences through aggressive means. Yet, the entire style of the articles was very calm. It could make you feel, even amidst those very stimulating things, that “this makes sense,” and you could also feel that sense of cosmic great love. It felt like these two things combined created a huge contrast, which was also very interesting. So, when I frequently read his stuff, I have complex feelings: “Sigh, isn’t this ridiculous?” But then I think, “Sigh, it’s humorous, it makes sense,” and then I think, “Hmm, it’s going off the beaten path,” and then I think, “This person is unique,” and then I feel a bit of envy, jealousy, and hate. Sometimes I think, “Should I learn more about this?” and sometimes I feel, “Hmm, something might be off.” In short, I’m constantly pulled back and forth between these complex emotions and thoughts.

After a certain period, I started thinking, why don’t I delve deeply into what he is actually talking about? On one hand, I wanted to reconnect with my old friend; on the other hand, I felt that perhaps the many things he talks about—things I don’t know, for example, I don’t have as much experience in finance as him—might be a new input, a new cognition for me, and it could really help open something up for me. So, last year, I joined his community to get a close-up view of this person and his ideas. My background is in law and anthropology. As a legal professional, I have a principle I always adhere to.

In my knowledge system, if I don’t understand him, I should assume he is benevolent; assume that what he has is valuable, and then rationally view it, criticizing it only when necessary. So, I still believe in this principle of presumption of innocence. As an anthropologist, I have curiosity, and I think the most important quality of an anthropologist is the willingness to immerse oneself in a culture. During the immersion process, of course, you temporarily set aside your critical thinking. For example, imagine you go to a primitive tribe. If you are constantly thinking, “What is this tribe all about?” you might actually find it difficult to truly understand this tribe from within—what it is like to be a member of this tribe. Of course, you can never truly become a member of that tribe; you still have your own nurtured background, your social background plays a huge role behind the scenes. But you try to put aside your preconceptions—the knowledge and insights you gained beforehand—and allow yourself to truly be changed and permeated by that person or that community’s culture, and then look at yourself after being permeated.

It’s equivalent to an anthropologist researching an object using their own body, using their very genuine experience. So, of course, my entry into this community isn’t that high-brow; it’s not like I’m conducting an anthropological study, but I have this background. So, I am very willing to truly assume that my previous ideas might have limitations, that I have some blind spots, and I want to experience and think and act like a member of the Academic Cat’s community.

So, this experiment lasted for quite a long time—I think six or seven months. I kept myself in this mode of thinking and acting to see what kind of content is actually in the Academic Cat’s community. It actually covers three very important topics that everyone cares about. I heard people joke that if you cover these three topics, any product or content you make will be bought, will go viral, and will make money. That’s “Get Rich, Get Laid, Don’t Die.” Meaning, become rich, and “Get Laid” means getting intimate—it’s about sex, love, and intimate relationships. And “Don’t Die” means health. “Get Rich, Get Laid, Don’t Die.”

The Academic Cat’s community covers these three topics: health, romance/marriage, and wealth. We can elaborate on these later. And these three topics are all underpinned by a grander cosmic view, a philosophy, or you could say a grand worldview—which is the Zero Limit cleansing method. So, you see, this structure is very deceptive. You are caught between very grand, very enlightened spiritual teachings and very bold, even gambler-like practices. The wealth, health, and romance—these all have a bit of that gambler-like quality, like they are trying to achieve something big with something small, or achieve cosmic-level rewards through some very clever means. That’s the general mindset. It bombards your nervous system every day with different chemical elements.

What are these chemical elements mainly? For example, adrenaline, which makes you very excited and anxious. Dopamine, which makes you addicted. But occasionally, there are very truthful or very soul-resonating feelings, like endorphins and oxytocin, that are at work. Do you feel like sometimes you’re anxious, sometimes you’re calm? This back-and-forth bombardment actually makes you very addicted. And this addiction constantly leads back to love and peace, finally to cleansing. But we still have to buy, buy, buy; we still have to eat, eat, eat; we still have to do something stimulating. This state of addiction is probably why many of us, including myself, and many of the community members want to check his Planet. So, next, let’s look at these topics one by one, along with this underlying worldview.

So, next, I will divide it into several sections: one about Zero Limit, the second about “氪金” (paying to level up), the third about 369, which is the healthy eating method, and then about love, health, and the overall community atmosphere. I will explain them in detail. First, although I have already made the judgment that this place is toxic, you can measure it yourself after hearing the details. So, those who are non-judgmental, you can leave now; you don’t have to listen to this episode. If you are non-judgmental, you can enter this community. I should add that, of course, we practice Nonviolent Communication, and in some way, mind-body teachings force us to notice our habitual judgments, our complaints, our aggressive tendencies—the kind of habits of a netizen. But if you use it to censor your own views and thoughts, and if it makes your naturally sharp, pointed thinking process dull, then…

You know, if you throw a “non-judgmental,” “cannot-be-judged,” or “don’t be too black-or-white” blanket over something, who knows? When you throw that blanket, your sharp thoughts are immediately blurred, like a mist, and everything becomes like paste. So, I prefer to become very subjective, very extreme, rather than using that blanket, that paste-like mist, to dilute or blur my own views.

First, Zero Limit. What kind of teaching is Zero Limit? Well, first, you must be 100% responsible for yourself. Everything you see, you must be responsible for, even if someone else experiences pain, it is still within your own consciousness. So, it must be cleansed by yourself. Pain is the replay of memory. So, for example, if you suffer some injustice in society, or if you are, say, robbed, stolen from, or assaulted, it is still a memory of victimization playing back within yourself. So, all you need to do is cleanse that memory. Everything else that goes wrong and causes pain is like that. You just need to take full responsibility for yourself. Even if someone hits you, you are responsible for it. So, you must delete, you must cleanse those memories. Similarly, others are your projections. So, this community really likes to say NPC, which stands for Non-Player Characters. Just like when you play a game, only you are the real player. The other people who appear, even though they seem to be talking to you, their conversations are pre-programmed. So, within this Zero Limit mindset, others are NPCs. Heh. How is this self-consistent? Are all of us NPCs? The general idea is that we are all NPCs—in my world, only I am real; I am 100% responsible for myself, and everyone else is my projection, an NPC.

So, even if others say something that hits me, or they hurt me in some way—for example, many people in the community were scammed—the person who was scammed is still an NPC; ultimately, we are responsible for it, bringing it back to ourselves, and cleansing the greed or the tendency to pick up small gains, or the fear within ourselves. How do we cleanse it? Zero Limit tells us that in some original tribe in Hawaii, they use this method to cleanse by constantly saying four phrases: “Sorry,” “Please forgive,” “Thank you,” “I love you.”

Or these four phrases are called “Hold No Pono.” There are many Zero Limit related products now. You see, this is really an industry. You can buy, say, a notebook where you tick off 1,000 times a day to cleanse. You just constantly repeat this, and it’s also a form of meditation. Don’t you think so? Because whatever you do, even if you repeat it 1,000 times, you can achieve a state of cleansing or enter a meditative state. Whatever you repeat, it actually prevents your mind from thinking about other things for a while. And you do it 1,000 times a day, or some people don’t do 1,000 times, but they constantly repeat it in their minds. When you think of it, in your daily social life, when someone says something, you constantly think in your mind: “Sorry, please forgive, thank you, I love you.” And Academic Cat himself says that during interactions with others, when he hears someone speak, he constantly silently repeats these four phrases in his mind. So, this is a thought system. You see, it is very highly self-consistent; it is a closed system. It first tells you that everything is very, very aggressive—that everything is your responsibility.

And the other things, you don’t need to worry about them yet. You cleanse yourself, and the outside world will change. After you cleanse yourself, you will have… wealth comes, but he is also very smart; he says this cleansing isn’t just to make you rich or help you find an ideal partner, because that would mean you have a thought. So, all thoughts must be cleansed. It looks very wise and profound.

Because when you cleanse everything to that absolute state of zero, it is indeed a grand and wide state that many practitioners or meditators pursue or experience. So, it seems to be one level higher than other manifestation laws, because other manifestation says, “If you do these things, you will get these.” But the higher point of Zero Limit is that you must cleanse the thought that you got those things. Even if you get them, you must cleanse the thought that you think those things are good.

It’s actually a bit like Vipassana. That practice ultimately says that you must zero out both the good and the bad. It actually has these philosophical shadows. So, this is any of the possible benefits or practices. When it is used to its extreme, or when you use it brainlessly, it can produce some distorted things. For example, when using Zero Limit, or especially in the Academic Cat’s practice, if you have any doubt, you must cleanse that doubt. So, it is essentially an unbeatable system that never makes a mistake. And you must constantly reinforce yourself and form a closed loop. Otherwise, you will keep doubting yourself. You doubt, so you can’t cleanse, unless you cleanse your own doubt. Do you understand this logic? So, if you have any dissatisfaction with the cleansing method, any doubt, any confusion, you…

And he adds a supplement: cleansing, or many of the current mind-body schools, have a bit of a contemptuous view. They think that our society has always been like a pendulum. You see, our mainstream society or science, this modern society, it emphasizes rationality and minimizes the body, minimizes intuition, minimizes spirituality. Then, in the spiritual world, you swing to the other extreme, where you constantly emphasize the body and intuition, and the signals of the universe—you must submit to them. You must be brainless. He even thinks “brainless” is a good word. You must let go of your rational judgment, don’t analyze so much, don’t debate. Debate is one of the biggest vices that prevents enlightenment. Don’t criticize, don’t think, don’t have those adversarial forces. Look at what I just said. If you take it and make it softer, without confrontation, letting go of your thinking, letting go of your analysis. Then it becomes a very seemingly reasonable, very soul-soothing meditation phrase. So, you see, hahaha, the same sentence, said with different tones, yields different effects.

In short, in Zero Limit, don’t over-doubt, don’t over-think. Just chant like a fool. In the Academic Cat’s community, “chanting like a fool” is a good phrase. It means that when you initially don’t understand what Zero Limit is, you constantly have doubts, but it doesn’t matter. You just repeat it like a fool. You repeat it to a certain degree, and you are truly brainwashed. You are truly changed, internalized, and permeated by his love, by those cosmic truths. So, you just keep repeating it.

For myself, I genuinely try to believe in this system. Especially when I have many doubts, I think, “How come? I almost said, ‘Oh, I’m so unhappy, I’m so prone to negative energy and complaining’ because I questioned too much, because I like to dig into things and figure them out, and think about the origin of Zero Limit.”

For example, in India, not just in some original tribe in Hawaii, I really wanted to know how the original tribes did it. But the people who really practice Zero Limit don’t care how the original tribes did it; they just culturally appropriate and plunder it, and use it in a very fragmented way. But my personality isn’t like that; I can’t just chant like a fool. So, I struggled for several months, trying to really do it, but now I can finally announce that I can’t, haha. If this process helped me in any way, it helped me understand myself more clearly, and more clearly know how my path should be. For example, I truly don’t believe that negative thoughts are just cleansed by chanting. When you keep chanting, it will be zeroed out—that thought is too naive. Think about it: if your consciousness is a screen, a stage, and you constantly fill it with 1,000 Zero Limit cleansing mantras, after a while, the negative thoughts will disappear, and you will feel how magical it is—they really disappear. But does that mean they are gone? For me, I still believe in the Jungian/Freudian idea: you actually have an unconscious. Your negative thoughts, your negative emotions are gone right now, doesn’t mean they aren’t there; you just violently suppress them, 10,000 times of negation, and they naturally run deeper into the unconscious. You suppress them 10,000 times, and they are gone.

This kind of Zero Limit cleansing, I think it definitely has short-term benefits. It can temporarily bring you back to peace, and it gives you a feeling that if you are particularly obsessed with “this is good” or “that is bad,” it can help you loosen that thought. But for someone who has been on the path of self-cognition and self-growth for a long time, I think it’s not helpful, or even detrimental. What do I think is the biggest drawback? It makes you grow a spiritual ego. You almost believe that you are that kind of person. But actually, if we look at it from the perspective of IFS (Internal Family Systems) in psychology, you have just grown a huge spiritual EGO. This part completely dominates your daytime, your main consciousness. What is that part? It’s constantly chanting, “Sorry, please forgive, thank you, I love you.”

It constantly feels like everything in this world is the best arrangement, and you view everything through this spiritual lens—the cosmic arrangement. Everything is being manifested by you, being sent to you by the universe, and all misfortune is a gift, and so on. Slowly, you brainwash yourself, and that ego takes over your entire life.

Look, why do we say that spiritualism has great power and influence? It’s because whether you eat a meal, poop, or interact with colleagues and friends, everything is within your background. Speaking of which, I once did a whole course called “Little Master.” This is how people in the mind-body field are easily misled by this “Little Master.” You develop this “Little Master” who guides your life every day, and you think, “I’ve cultivated it, I’ve achieved results!” There is nothing more absurd or contrary to the path than this, which is further away from the truth of self-knowledge. We certainly cannot know the truth completely, but at least we must approach it. But this rational ego makes it increasingly difficult for you to approach self-knowledge.

In short, the Zero Limit’s cosmic love, combined with the fact that you only focus on yourself, is a distorted hybrid. On one hand, it has profound, possibly ancient spiritual practices, like I said, similar to Vipassana. On the other hand, it makes you truly become a good… well, I cleanse myself, and others’ pain—if they haven’t cleansed it themselves, they are still playing their own game. They want to play that game of pain. Look, with this method, you can completely isolate yourself. You can even beautify it and say, “The Great Dao is ruthless,” “Heaven’s Dao is ruthless.” I just can’t empathize or sympathize much with those who are suffering.

So, when you are permeated by this worldview for a long time, you really won’t look at the news because you can’t accept it. After you look at it, you can’t accept that it’s not a dream or a game. If you slightly let that spiritual ego retreat a little, you will find that this world is not the way your spiritual teachings say it is, at least from the perspective of the other parts. You don’t allow yourself to see it that way, because if you truly allow yourself to soften a little, you can’t look at the news. So, you see, to a certain extent, these mind-body things are building a spiritual wall, a dike, for us. It is actually sealing it off. You have to build a bubble, build a shell, build a very protective one, only then can you survive inside your highly self-consistent little bubble. This was also the case for me for a long time. I couldn’t look at the news. If I looked at it, I felt inconsistent, or I had to constantly use this dominant Zero Limit framework to convince myself when looking at the news. The feeling of heartache… Yes, yes, now that you know, when I started slowly emerging from this toxic thing a few months ago, I found that every time I looked at the news, whether positive or negative, I really felt more things, which made me feel like I was truly alive. Of course, this is a later point. Previously, my good friend, Qing, who is a news reporter, also had a critique of the news—saying the news is another kind of bubble—but this is more detail, which we can discuss later. But at least I am willing to truly look at current events or look at more documentary materials. And even if all the documentaries have their own biases, I won’t easily jump to the conclusion before watching, saying, “We must view this through a spiritual lens.” I no longer have that lens. Okay, this is the first one: Zero Limit. The second, let’s talk about the “氪金” (paying to level up) trend in the Academic Cat’s community. “Kè jīn,” simply put, is the belief that the more you spend, the more you have. The more you spend, the easier it is, which means you are in a state of abundance regarding money. You believe it is infinitely abundant; it is constantly flowing. You spend it, and it flows back; you don’t need to hold onto it tightly. On the contrary, if you feel money is scarce, if you feel it’s not enough, and you don’t dare to spend, the more you don’t dare to spend, the more you are in that scarcity frequency, and the less money you have.

Another idea is the encouraging approach: don’t look at the price of the goods; don’t look at the price tag, just buy what moves your heart. What does “just buy what moves your heart” mean? It means you see a handbag, a watch, a hotel that moves your heart, and you don’t care how much it costs; you just buy it. Because the universe will support you in living in that frequency of moving hearts, combined with the backing of Zero Limit mentioned earlier.

Of course, we need to cleanse which thoughts? For example, “I don’t have money,” or “I am afraid of losing money,” or “I feel ashamed about spending money,” or “I feel ashamed about becoming a millionaire.” In short, you must cleanse all beliefs related to money, especially those that make you poor. You must constantly chant the mantra: “Sorry, please forgive, thank you, I love you.” Okay, so this is the theory of “Kè jīn.” Academic Cat himself is constantly practicing it; he almost never says that he doesn’t go to high-end restaurants and hotels every day, and he frequently goes shopping and buys many expensive things.

Besides spending money, “Kè jīn” in this community also manifests as many people taking on debt. Is debt a bad thing, or even a good thing in this community? For example, I know many community members; some of them are in debt of 1 million, some 500,000, some 100,000 or 200,000. And what do they do? What is the logic? If you truly believe that money is an energy, that it is flowing, then debt is also a form of flow. So, don’t worry about whether the number is positive or negative. You can experience, say, being in debt of 1 million, and that is a huge scope, a huge amount. And you can enjoy how luxurious, how unique, the things are that you usually can’t enjoy with that 1 million. Those things open up your perspective. You win! You will definitely earn that 1 million back in the future. Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Look, this is the power of Zero Limit. It doesn’t say that the goal of your debt is necessarily to become a millionaire, because it doesn’t even encourage you initially; it at least superficially doesn’t encourage you to earn more money, because the thought of earning more money must also be cleansed.

But look, even though he says that, why do so many people embrace this idea? Because ultimately, many of them still manage to earn more money, or become more financially abundant through Zero Limit, thereby confirming that Zero Limit is good. So, it’s not possible to completely zero out everything, putting everything in the middle.

Right, so if you take on 1 million in debt, every time you think, “What should I do? I’m in debt, I have to pay it back,” you just need to cleanse it. You cleanse this fear, you cleanse this feeling of scarcity. And there are also many people in the community who were scammed. Today you hear someone was defrauded of 30,000 yuan by a telecom scam; the next day, someone lost even hundreds of thousands, maybe 500,000 or 600,000. You notice something strange about the people who were scammed here. In any other place, when someone is scammed, everyone feels so miserable, and others comfort them. But here, the person who was scammed first self-mocks, self-criticizes, and then others celebrate that they have recognized this layer, or celebrate that they have shattered the illusion of money, or the game of money. In short, to be honest, this atmosphere is very helpful for the person who just lost money—it’s a very unique and positive state of mind.

I had a friend who was also scammed, and I took some screenshots from the community to show him, and gave him some encouragement. So, his thinking was unique, and it was certainly helpful, but you think about it. The logic is strange: “I was scammed of money, of course, I have my own negligence, but the main thing is that I want to cleanse my feeling of scarcity.” This is not right. There is a lot of shame in it. When you say shame, you might need to cleanse shame. Academic Cat himself also says, for example, that someone was scammed of hundreds of thousands, and Academic Cat jokingly says, “Look, I told you to buy a Ferrari, and this was exactly the deposit for the Ferrari. Look, you didn’t buy it.” Well, now you know. That’s the general idea. And that person indeed felt that they should have bought a Ferrari at the time and paid a deposit. I also talked to those who were truly in debt, and I asked them what kind of psychological state they were in. Since it involves others’ privacy, I’ll just give a general idea. They said the biggest pressure was always thinking about what to do when it was time to repay the debt. And at that time, the pressure could only be borne by themselves. And because this is a closed, self-consistent system, when they bear it themselves, they naturally feel that they must cleanse themselves, they must traverse this dark game by themselves.

And they also rationalize and justify the debt. Because everything you do has two sides, right? But this matter becomes a blurring of right and wrong. For example, many people will say, “I’m in debt, but I saw another world, I experienced another life.” For example, many people actually have no source of income, not completely no, but they lack the ability to earn money. They are a fresh graduate, and they don’t want to suffer, don’t want to intern, don’t want to do that. So, they just take out loans.

Now, whether it’s banks or Alipay loans, it’s easy to constantly take loans from various platforms, and you can indeed enjoy things ahead of time. You haven’t earned the money through labor or through exchanging value, yet you enjoy it. You can really feel a sense of effortless gain. Of course, that is a rationalized thing, right? You can also say, “I’m so young, I did something so bold,” or “I have such an unconventional experience with money.” Everything can be rationalized. You can eat it, it can be rationalized, because I tasted a flavor that is impossible to taste in life, right? Besides this financial debt, Academic Cat also talks about something called “escaping the school” (or “escaping the norm”). He is very good at it. I think it’s not just Academic Cat, but if you look at it broadly, any influential person, any person with charisma, personality charm—any major thought leader, any influencer in various fields—they invent their own terminology. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that any of us, for example, when we do marketing or start our own business, we can master our discourse power, and use our words to influence a group of people. It’s a very powerful ability.

For example, Academic Cat talks about something called “sucking the hole” (or “extracting the funds”). What does “sucking the hole” mean? It means you go and suck the money of people who are still in a scarcity mindset. Look, “Kè jīn” is sucking your own money; “sucking the hole” is a step further—you are sucking other people’s money. Especially whose money? You see, it’s amazing that you can’t suck Academic Cat’s money because Academic Cat is so self-consistent; he feels he is no longer in a scarcity mindset. He says, “Why should I suck yours?” But he specifically targets those who feel poor, who feel they have no money, or who are indeed poor, such as those who are in debt or students with no income. And you go and suck their money. For example, you might invite them to a high-end restaurant, order expensive wine, and then specifically ask the poorest person to pay for the whole meal.

The poorest person, of course, is initially terrified, but eventually, they can rationalize it, and they can start opening up their perspective. They might think, “Oh, I can actually rely on my parents,” or “I can go back to my small town,” or “I can go to a better place.” In short, there are indeed some life transformations through being sucked. So, later, for a period of time, this was very popular in the community. I think the most absurd, yet boldest and most aggressive thing is that Academic Cat plays a game called “escaping the school.” You first pay Academic Cat money, and no matter how much you pay, Academic Cat will randomly, based on his understanding of you or his intuition, say, “I want double,” or “I want 8 times,” or “I want 10 times.” For example, you already paid 10,000, and he says, “I want 10 times,” so you pay him 100,000. This is consensual, so it’s not extortion, nor is it any threat or inducement; everyone willingly plays this game just for the fun of it. Why play it? Because if you feel that the amount you paid to Academic Cat is already yours, you have to tremble a little before you can take it out. But when Academic Cat says the multiplier, you can double that trembling and break through that fear—you break through the illusion of fear by giving him more money.

This game was played by everyone for a while. I watched it and almost went crazy, hahaha. Do you think it’s because I didn’t pay enough, so I haven’t broken through yet? I really thought that, honestly, for a while. I wondered if I wasn’t playing this game thoroughly, if I wasn’t playing it to the fullest, so that this question—is it toxic?—keeps popping up in my mind. Speaking of which, if you look at all these practices separately, you might find them absurd, but why when they are combined, and combined with the guidance of the Zero Limit thought, do they feel so right? I felt for a long time that they were so wonderful, so harmonious, so boldly unconventional, so clever.

Well, when I tell these things to anyone who hasn’t really encountered mind-body teachings, and especially when I tell them to any European, they say, “Holy crap, he’s crazy. This is a cult.” And for a long time, I thought, “You don’t understand; there are many theories and spiritual systems behind this.” So, your first reaction is to think it sounds strange. At this point, my husband and I argued for a very long time, and I thought, “You don’t understand; Academic Cat has a very deep system of logic, and so on.” Okay, the same goes for everyone—judge for yourselves. I heard many community members use this phrase to describe themselves in relation to debt. They say, “I actively chose debt,” “I actively want to play the debt game.” You see, it’s still that money game. And the NPC world is a fake illusion, a dream game’s discourse—“I actively played the debt game,” “I actively chose debt,” as if they are saying they have more dignity, more awareness. How much is in this “active choice”? I ask you, if you weren’t brainwashed by Academic Cat, or if you didn’t look at this bullshit mind-body stuff, could you actively choose debt? Unless you are a gambler, unless you are completely rational about everything, unless you are addicted to something, unable to break free, would you actively choose debt? Of course, that’s for entrepreneurs; entrepreneurship itself is playing with debt, or investing in things, which is debt.

Let’s not talk about those. If you are an ordinary person, you might casually take on a large debt, and then stay in a five-star hotel every day, and eat at a Michelin restaurant inside. Would you do those things while being in debt? How much is it truly an active choice? This is specifically for one of my friends; I really want to wake him up. I even feel that if you continue to think this way, we won’t be able to be friends—it drives me crazy, hahaha. This episode might be two hours long.

No problem. This is the last episode of my podcast. I’ll talk about 369, the Anthony diet. I’ll briefly explain what it is. Generally, it’s about eating less oil and more vegetables and fruits. Drinking 1,000—at least 500 ml—of celery juice every morning, and before that, you can drink lemon juice. And what else? Anyway, it’s a detox system. You use Zero Limit for the mental cleansing, and you use 369 for the physical cleansing. 369 is a 3-day, 6-day, 9-day, which is actually a total of 10 days. Most of the time, you only eat vegetables and fruits, and constantly drink these detoxifying things. Many people say it cured their… well, me. For a long time, I have been critical of Western modern science, such as how they divide food into carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

I think Western science naturally has its arrogance, and I am disappointed with it, feeling that this division is very mechanical. And the “fitness party” people who rely on science to eat are also fixed, and they often ignore the body’s own functions, its intuition, its hunger cues. So, first, I don’t completely believe in the science system, which is why it opened a door for me to be curious about metaphysics and things like 369.

But, after learning about it, I feel that the degree of ignorance of 369 towards science—it completely ignores whether your body constitution is like this or that. Sigh, I really feel this needs to be a separate episode. I think if you look at Anthony a little more, you will realize that he is truly crazy, narcissistic, talks nonsense, and constantly scares his followers through intimidation, and then he reverses it, of course, using spirituality, love, or whatever high-level concepts.

It seems like he is a very righteous person, and he has set up an opposing side: our medical system, the expensive medical system. And he says he is the savior, and that by just eating vegetables and fruits, and how, to help you detoxify, to cure all kinds of diseases. Haha, this is truly a bizarre era, our era. The more counter-intuitive, the more you feel, “Sigh, isn’t this counter-intuitive? Aren’t truths always counter-intuitive?” So, is he the truth? Should we believe him? So, many people in the Academic Cat’s community are doing 369. I personally have a history of eating disorders, and many of my cases around me also have eating disorders. 369 is actually a very dangerous diet for people with eating disorders. Even if Anthony says 369 is used to cure eating disorders, because eating disorders aren’t caused by blah, but by some virus in your body, your adrenaline imbalance, and so on—he has his theory that he can cure eating disorders.

Okay, we can’t finish today. We’ll dedicate a separate episode to the dangers of 369. Chapter Four, which is also simple, is about Academic Cat’s view on love. He really likes to shout slogans. Many people in the community like to shout slogans: “Believe in love,” “Believe in men,” and they often like to use the word “Duchess.” And there is another slogan: “A happy wife, a fulfilled desire—I want to achieve my happy wife, fulfilled desire.” I think this community was born in what kind of era? First, most people are afraid of marriage, afraid of getting married. Many people don’t want to settle for an ordinary person, and combined with the fact that feminism is increasingly prevalent, they feel that most men are not very good, but many are disappointed with feminism because it only woke up our consciousness but didn’t make us sharper, couldn’t soften to become a woman, a Duchess.

And Academic Cat perfectly captured this. I know it wasn’t intentional, but the background of this era is like this. He captured the relationship between men and women in this era. Many people have no solution for this, and feminism can’t provide the answer, and the previous generation of parents also can’t provide the answer. So, we have to find our own system. Academic Cat indeed created many understandings of love, combining spirituality, traditional Chinese culture, and the teachings of Healing. So, he feels that we must cultivate ourselves, constantly dress up elegantly, go out to eat well, and live a Duchess-like life, and attract a man who matches your state, and achieve a happy wife, fulfilled desire. I think in this discourse, many community members follow suit. I think it’s right. For example, the image of the “old hag” or the “hard-working life” is often a resistance and fear of the previous generation’s female image, right? Many people are afraid of aging or of suffering through hard work or the mundane aspects of family life that wear down the youth and beauty of a person.

I myself became a mother for two years, and the wrinkles on my body, and my various physical changes—you might slowly, or even not slowly, but quickly. I don’t know if everyone is afraid of this, and constantly buying cosmetics, and doing aesthetic procedures. And earlier we talked about “sucking the hole,” this love aspect also sucks the husband. For example, asking the husband to buy me a handbag, a diamond ring, buy a house, or to give his money to me. Many times, they celebrate that the husband really did it, and that the husband loves me so much. Sigh.

Let me quickly complain about this, not saying much because it involves privacy—Academic Cat’s own romance, I have witnessed it, and it was very… to put it nicely, immature; to put it bluntly, ugly. And I think even though I haven’t been in contact with him for many years, so there is no very private connection, I don’t know how his love life is, but at least in the community, I see him changing partners one after another, and he is always saying, “Soon to get married,” or “At least he’s saying soon to get married,” when he changes another person. I think he hasn’t broken out of his own emotional pattern. Sigh, this is something I can’t… what I say now is completely subjective personal attack.

Haha, because I am not his consultant, nor am I anyone who knows him. I just feel that he hasn’t… even though he constantly says he is cultivating the topic of love and breaking through it, he can’t establish a long-term intimate relationship. And setting aside the long-term intimate relationship for a moment, okay? Various theories, otherwise, I’m going to be exhausted. I say he can’t. And this is something he can’t cultivate, and he can’t cultivate it through various “Kè jīn.”

If you really want to establish what is called a happy wife, fulfilled desire, you must show it in a real marriage. And based on what we see now, he is so self-centered. We will talk about this later—self-love. In this state of self-love, it is impossible to enter a relationship. You must see the imperfect things in the relationship, the vulnerable things, the unbearable things. And his logic is so self-consistent; all these things must be cleansed.

His long-standing view of love is: don’t let two people cry and whine at each other, and pity each other. You must live a good life, and even if you have to separate, that’s okay, but the premise is that you must not live a bad life. In this state, you might be very successful in “Kè jīn” or in wealth. I think in love, we wait and see. I am very curious who Panda will marry in the end. This is what everyone in the Knowledge Circle might be gossiping about. Every day, a new song, later many people joked that Panda always falls in love with the next song. Anyway, let’s talk about the overall atmosphere of the community. The community atmosphere—there might be hundreds of new posts every day. Most people might not look at all the posts because there is a highlight content. The highlight is a setting in Knowledge Circle; the new posts, and guests or administrators can add highlights to the posts. There is also a section: “Only view new posts.” So, I chat with many people in the Academic Cat’s Planet, and they say they basically only look at highlights and only look at new posts. And the highlights are selected, and they are all sharing the same context with Academic Cat. They share these values.

And you will see many people showing off their money—here, the so-called “ordinary” people are “Versailles,” showing off what they bought today. And you will find many people posting these things in the highlight posts, and many receive praise, and many compliments. Even if there are some reflection posts, they are also posted in the Planet.

But if you, I sometimes post my own thoughts in the Planet, which might be different from Panda’s ideas, but you have to learn to use his discourse. For example, if you just have a furious, crazy-like reflection, it definitely won’t be highlighted. But if you use a little rational awareness—I don’t know if it’s rational—anyway, spiritual awareness—words, to reflect on your own habits, or even to think about whether this community is suitable for you, it might be highlighted, but overall, it is still a minority.

And Academic Cat’s own posts receive a lot of likes, and many compliments like an idol. And almost there are no different voices. And if there are, some people raise some difficult, say, unresolvable doubts. Academic Cat will shudder and say, “Either it’s a joke,” or say something humorous, or reverse it and accuse the other person, saying, “Then you are not accusing, you might be giving a hint to the other person. Sigh, you just think about it more,” or, “Hmm, think about this word for a few days, then we’ll think about it,” or “smile without speaking.” That’s the general response, or asking some inspiring questions in reverse. It creates a kind of dizzying effect on people.

By the way, Academic Cat’s official account also doesn’t have it. The comments on the official account—each creator can filter them. If there are any critical or doubtful comments, they are not visible in Academic Cat’s official account comments section. He probably actively filters those who praise him and silently chants the four phrases to cleanse the criticisms. Okay, that’s a detailed introduction to Academic Cat’s own community. Oh my god, should I do the next ones? There are 5 more chapters, and we’ve only reached Chapter One. Should I do it in installments or all at once? I’ll do it all at once, and then see if I should cut it into several parts. Chapter Two: Cult. What is a cult? “Cult” in Latin, it’s not really the derogatory meaning we use now. It’s more like cultus, which means care, cultivation. You can imagine a benevolent, healthy little tribe, a tribe. It might have some leaders, some priests—those with high power and status—but their purpose is to cultivate the entire community’s land, and gather people together. Caring for people—that’s the meaning itself. But slowly, because of religion, especially Christianity, when it started establishing its dominance in the West, other religions became “cults,” and the most extreme of those cults is called a cult. So, does Academic Cat’s organization count as a cult? I think in the narrow sense, it’s not a cult, because in the narrow sense, if a cult might be a person worship, and collects all people’s money into its own pocket, or it’s a pyramid structure where the top few people collect the most money.

And I think Academic Cat is not like that. You don’t have to give him money, besides the high course fees, he actually encourages you to spend money on capitalism—on other hotels, LV, Hermès. So, you don’t give the money directly to him, and he doesn’t have a limit; he doesn’t force you to develop a limit. So, it’s not a pyramid scheme like a cult. He doesn’t force you to cut off ties with your family; he even sometimes encourages you to go home, and because he also does Healing, that is, the family aspect, he sometimes encourages you to reconcile with your family.

He doesn’t force labor; many cults force you to work to build houses or something. He doesn’t force arranged marriage. These are the typical things of a cult—collecting money, accumulating wealth, forcing family separation, forced labor, arranged marriage, and doing some crimes. He doesn’t do any of these. So, this is what makes me constantly… this is what I’ve always been conflicted and confused about: it’s not a cult in the narrow sense, so for a long time, I couldn’t define or understand this community. But slowly, I started thinking about whether there is a broad sense of a cult—that any organization that worships and attaches itself to people, things, ideas, or symbols, reaching the point of giving up critical and independent thinking, is a cult? Let me state my definition: any worship and attachment to people, things, ideas, or symbols that reaches the point of giving up critical and independent thinking can be classified as a cult.

I think if we follow this broad definition, many organizations are cults, including many of us who are fanatical. To be blunt, they are not the three mainstream religions—Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism. If you give up your critical and independent thinking, you are also in a cult. Including the very popular things now, like Anthony, and Western Tony Robbins, like “One Thought Shift,” and many spiritual mentors. Do you think they have cult attributes? If they make people give up critical and independent thinking, then it is a cult. You might say, “Whether to give up one’s independent thinking and critical thinking is one’s own business.”

You can’t say that some people are brainless and follow, say, Academic Cat. Academic Cat is indeed a cult. We really can’t say that, because some people simply lack the ability to think independently, and then the entire organization is a cult. But if you have a mindset where you constantly cleanse your critical thinking, constantly cleanse your analytical mind, cleanse your doubts, then it is a cult.

Let me give another example: Tony Robbins, the “One Thought Shift” we just mentioned. Many mind-body people, especially those in the spiritual field, like this. Simply put, when you have a thought, especially a negative judgment, say, “Academic Cat is toxic,” you must do the work, you must shift the thought, you must turn it around, “Hey, Academic Cat is not toxic,” and you must feel it.

If this is true, what is my thought? Say, “Academic Cat is toxic,” and my feeling is, “Anger,” or “Vigilance,” or “Hmm, how about that?” And if you shift the thought, “Hey, it’s just a misunderstanding,” then you feel relaxed, or trusting, or loving. And then you shift the thought again, “It can be toxic, toxic.” Then you think, “Oh, maybe it is true that it’s toxic,” and then I might be a narrow-minded person, I might be trapped in the poison of rationality—being obsessed with criticism is also a kind of poison. It makes sense, it makes sense. When I repeatedly shift the thought, “He’s not toxic,” “I’m not toxic,” or “everyone is not toxic,” or “everyone is not toxic,” everyone is not toxic. Then you shift back and forth, and you become more and more open-minded, and your anger, your obsession disappears. Everything is again peaceful and loving.

Many people like to do this “One Thought Shift.” Do you know? If you attend Tony Robbins’ offline retreat, a training camp, an intensive week or something, you have to sign a document. You can’t finish the lecture and then say bad things about him. You have to sign that you will put your criticisms aside, or try to test your own things as much as possible. And if you say bad things about him outside, you will be sued because you signed this document. And when you are in the retreat, what do you do? If you challenge him face-to-face, he will make you do a “One Thought Shift” on the spot; he will guide you until you love him.

It’s really like that. Some people later didn’t hesitate to be sued, risking being sued to expose this—that if you dare to question him, you must shift the thought; you must shift back. Look, this is another highly self-consistent, highly closed logic, right? As long as you participate in his “One Thought Shift,” you cannot leave alive—you cannot leave alive with critical thinking.

My, haha, I’m crazy! I want to attend it. I am sure I will achieve enlightenment; I will ascend to heaven. Right? So, you see, this is contemporary cult, or what we call contemporary mind-body cult. The most unsettling or confusing thing about it is that it also makes people lose their judgment. It’s not as overtly toxic as the others. Most of the people we mentioned earlier are well-intentioned; they all have very valuable things to spread. They have cultivated to a certain degree and have many insights; they really want to express them. They wouldn’t say, “I have a spiritual aspiration,” “I am a bad person, so I must create a cult.” No, they aren’t like that. I believe they are at least subconsciously, not actively wanting to create a cult. I believe Academic Cat wouldn’t think that way. He actually advocates for you to have your own path, to want to walk your own way, to listen to your own voice, and so on. So, they definitely deny that this is a cult.

And I actually, if it weren’t for this podcast today, I wouldn’t use such a big label. But let’s tentatively use the concept of a cult to think about it: if a cult truly becomes a culture in the broad sense, why does this situation arise? I think a slap on the palm doesn’t make a sound. Look, even the people mentioned earlier, they created this thing, and they also need someone, right? Including myself, and including the thousands of users of Academic Cat’s Planet, we created this cult together, accommodated these ideas, created this community atmosphere, and then hyped it up. And it keeps running.

For example, I mentioned earlier that I beautified it by saying that I joined Academic Cat’s community out of anthropological curiosity. But in this chapter, I will confess why I was attracted to the cult, why I wanted to enter Academic Cat’s community. I entered it last year, right after giving birth to my child, which was my most vulnerable, most confused, most desperate time—to what extent? I hadn’t slept through the night for a year. I sought many methods to see how my child could stop crying wildly at night—I sought mainstream doctors, and various non-mainstream energy therapies, and Five Element acupuncture, and many others, and even later, Taoists helped us adjust Feng Shui and exorcise ghosts, but nothing worked.

You see, I could clearly see how desperate and anxious my state was. So, I desperately craved anything, even if it was fringe, even if it was strange. I thought, “Maybe the mainstream things won’t work, all the things I tried didn’t work? Maybe that strange thing can work?” So, one day a thought arose: maybe one day I will follow Academic Cat, “Kè jīn,” and open up my own perspective, elevate my own energy, focus on myself. I don’t want to think so much about whether the child can sleep.

I wear high heels every day, put on makeup, go to a five-star hotel to drink tea, go to high-end malls to shop. Sometimes I take the child with me. Maybe the child can follow me, and the energy frequency can rise, and our whole family’s relationship will magically change, and their sleep will change. So, I was driven by this thought and entered this place. I dare say, because I didn’t know it.

Thousands of people in our community, I don’t know how many are in a state of despair and craving salvation, craving something magical to save them. Look at me. Even though I had learned so much about drama, about the drama, the triangle, including the victim, the savior, the perpetrator—I knew that once I put myself in a victim state, needing to be saved, needing to find an antidote, I was easily harmed, easily brainwashed by different things.

Even though I knew this, in my most desperate state, I still went. So, this is my own weakness, my own loss of rational judgment, and I started embracing factors of unrealistic hope. So, this is why I say a slap on the palm doesn’t make a sound—there are my own reasons. Recently, I really like to look at stories of cults, experiences of cults, how the people who came out talk about it, and how the people inside talk about it. Recently, I read a book called Manhattan Cult Story. It’s about one person who was trapped in it for decades, and all his friends were cult members. But of course, at first, he didn’t think it was a cult; he thought it was a very beautiful community, and the people in the community were very loving. And the leader of the community was a spiritual mentor who claimed to have some very esoteric—what is esoteric in Chinese?—some secret practices and tenets that can make you live a very wise life. He didn’t promote other things; he just promoted, “You must live a wise life in this life.”

And the author, and most of the people in this cult, or what we call this community, they are mostly graduates of Ivy League schools, and they are doctors, lawyers, finance people—basically high-educated people. They attract high-educated people who are doing bullshit jobs. Their financial jobs don’t find meaning, and they can’t make friends, so this community is particularly attractive. I quote a passage from this book: why do we, such smart people, join such a cult or community? When we were so young, we had an unsolvable thirst for the meaning of life, and we craved friendship, wisdom, community answers, support—we craved finding a model to explain the world and live a good life.

We would rather believe in the existence of magic, we believe we have a secret method for self-improvement. So, we let Sharon—the highest leader in it—so we let Sharon freely enter our mind, body, conscience, and will. When I saw this passage, I felt deeply understood—that desire for the meaning of life, for friendship, for wisdom, for community answers. And for magic, for believing in magic. Of course, this easily captures me. I feel lucky that I entered Academic Cat’s circle. Me, hahaha, at most, I bought some designer things, stayed in some hotels. If any cult had appeared in my life, I might really have joined it. Sigh. And combined with what we just said—why a slap on the palm doesn’t make a sound—I also have my own reasons. Another reason is that I still have some tendencies.

I mentioned in a previous episode about pleasing others—that is, being afraid of being isolated by the group, liking to be praised by the group, loving it. Everyone has the tendency to please others. When I entered Academic Cat’s community, this tendency came out. It made me lose my critical thinking because I desperately want to belong to a community. Of course, I had my own community at the time, but I was in the role of the leader in the community. I felt that I needed to go to a community where someone else was the leader, so I could be the little one, so I could be supported and loved. So, I really wanted to find belonging. And I am also sensitive; I am very good at reading people. I think everyone who practices spirituality has this trauma—they are very sensitive. If you are not sensitive, you won’t enter this field; if you are sensitive, you will see what words should be said and what words should not be said, or what level you should say them. For example, when I first joined, I didn’t have that much defense or tendency to please others. Because I was used to expressing myself truthfully, I would say, “I observed that this community has some phenomena.” For example, the first is that the highlights are not all negative posts; positive posts are highlighted, and negative posts don’t even get likes. Anyone will empathize with, care about, and express the negative post.

And the second is, “Oh, why is everyone doing 369?” I worry it might be a disguised form of dieting, and whether it will be bad for the body in the long run. I have an eating disorder, and I care about everyone. And there is also something else—it seems like they are reading a book, which is the most… At the time, I was reading something about the imprint of wealth, supposedly by a doctor. So, I went to check the articles of that doctor, and the result was that the person was nowhere to be found, and even the doctoral dissertation… I said, “Don’t you think this is strange?” Well, at that time, of course, some people thought I was so real and cute, and others started accepting the group mockery, and were said by the people who are active in the Planet, “You are just being sarcastic,” in short, many sarcastic remarks and direct “don’t like Jess.”

Actually, when I look back at these doubts and thoughts, I still feel more clearly that what I said—I insist on my view. At that moment, I didn’t realize that my “seam” had appeared; my tendency to please others came out. “It’s over, the community people don’t like me.” It’s not a thought or a cognitive issue; it’s a very primitive impulse. “It’s over, the community doesn’t like me.” I have to say something to round it off. It’s an unconscious behavior. So, I started posting, “Ah, I realized that I… I seem to really like criticism, and I really like confrontation,” and it might also be the source of many of my own pains. No, and I also started building friendly relationships with people who openly disliked me. I felt that Panda was really pitiful at the time. My… I have to have myself, hahaha. It’s so hard to maintain relationships. And soon, that tendency to please others turned into, “Academic Cat is really amazing.”

I came to the community, and soon I changed. My… many of my thoughts changed. And I wanted to, I even wanted to spread Academic Cat’s ideas; I wanted to follow Academic Cat. Hmph, I don’t know how I said this. At that time, I really had a big feeling, a truly sacred feeling, as if my critical voice collapsed, whether it was collapsed by myself or it might loosen up, then I felt a kind of awe, like many believers, whether Christians or Buddhists, stand before a golden Buddha statue or a cross.

And everything melts—my little self melts. I had that feeling for a moment, and I thought, “Wow, this Academic Cat thing is really amazing. I melted, haha.” Then I wrote that down, and later I slowly felt, “Hmm, maybe that was a momentary impulse or a momentary ecstatic experience.” Then later, my critical thinking came back, until today when I made this episode of the podcast. So, let’s think about how to avoid creating or joining a cult. Because we just said that creating it is often not intentional, but a community, after reaching a certain atmosphere, it might become a cult. I think the simplest, most direct way is to first admit that you have this tendency—to admit that in the human thought structure, in the consciousness and body structure, it is easy to tend to join or create a cult.

A cult has these two huge impulses. Which one? The first is the desire for power. Look, if you become a cult leader, you can give orders, you can brainwash people, you can instill your values in others. What a great power! And others can embrace you and give you likes, and give you nice comments. Everyone has the impulse to become a cult leader, but the size of the impulse varies for each person, and the ability to suppress this impulse, or truly realize its action, varies. But this desire for power is something everyone has. And on the other side, everyone has the impulse to join a cult—that is, everyone craves submission to a greater entity, belonging to a greater existence.

Whether it’s a community, nature, or the universe, it wants to unify. This is the foundation of many spiritual teachings. It is that every one of us has that desire. We are born as separate individuals; we cannot live alone; we need someone to take care of us. So, this is rooted in our humanity, whether it’s genes or our thoughts—we crave unification, we crave belonging to a greater community. And if a cult is very clear, if its doctrine is very self-consistent, especially if it is closed-loop, it is more attractive, because it reduces a lot of your doubts and thinking, and it also consumes energy, you consume very little. Then you enter this state of being guided and directed, and having a sense of belonging. Wow, who doesn’t want that? Everyone has this impulse. So, that’s why the method to avoid creating or joining a cult is to admit it first—to admit that you have it. And you can also think about everyone. I think everyone’s tendency is different. Some are like S and M; some tend to S, some lean more towards M. In my daily life, I often proactively create things, lead the community. I really want to join a cult. I found that when I truly realized this a few months ago, I admitted it, “I really want to join a cult,” and I constantly…

Later, I constantly told people, my friends, the people around me, even my cases, “If I am really a cult, and don’t want to be your consultant, I want to be a cult member.” Hahaha, a member of a cult. Look, previously it was an unconscious impulse. The more I put it in the unconscious, the more I told people, “Hey, one day I feel like it’s boring; I don’t want to join a cult.” The cult leader himself doesn’t know what he is or what he is doing, and he is just holding on. And he makes you establish a false, consensus-based friendship, instead of one based on differences and harmony.

It’s boring. Because I wanted to join a cult, I looked at many books about cults, many histories of religion, and many modern and contemporary mind-body cults. Then I didn’t feel like it anymore. Look, this is because I wanted to understand many things, and then I didn’t feel like it anymore. Then my power and my thinking came back to life. I felt that in these four or five years inside the big bubble of mind-body, my thinking really stalled. I didn’t want to stall anymore; I wanted to live again, I wanted to awaken again. I wanted to awaken from this big bubble of mind-body cult. I regained my critical thinking, I started to understand philosophy again, read politics, and understand the news. Similarly, the idea of creating a cult.

I actually sometimes felt in my own company that I wanted to be a dictator, that I wanted to be the one who decides everything. Hmph, I still have this idea; maybe I really need to start another dictatorial company, hahaha, to slowly transform this thought. Right? Did you notice? Actually, everything we have is on a spectrum. You have some desire for power, some desire to submit, some desire to merge. It’s fine if you don’t go to extremes. It’s all human nature, and you can even have it in some cases, like when we often consult or coach. You can even play with it; you can role-play a crazy cult leader and a crazy cult member in a safe environment. It can release a lot of suppressed desires. These are all fine. But truly joining something, or creating a real long-term one, like many people do, I think everyone should just be sensible. Okay.

Chapter Four: Self-Love. Earlier, we mentioned that a cult is a 0-100 spectrum. Self-love is also a spectrum. In this part, since I am not a clinically qualified person to diagnose whether someone is narcissistic, or a psychologist or psychiatrist. And I think psychology and psychiatry themselves have some problems. Why should they be the ones to diagnose whether someone is narcissistic? That’s a later point.

So, today, the self-love I’m talking about is just labeling. I’m labeling Academic Cat, and myself, and many people who first join the mind-body circle with the label of “narcissistic.” Okay, let’s understand what narcissism is. Of course, everyone’s degree is different, but generally speaking, it is the inability to empathize with others. Everyone is constantly saying, “The world is a dream,” “The world is a game,” “I am 100% responsible for everything,” “Others are NPCs.” This is a manifestation of the inability to empathize with others.

Then, not accepting criticism, not listening to criticism, not seeking help, because I am narcissistic; I know everything about myself, so why should I seek help? Then always being in a superior position, and not reflecting. A large characteristic of narcissism is that you only focus on yourself, and you hope that others also pay attention to you. Then liking to show off, arrogance, and being busy with fame and profit, and beauty and the ideal partner—these are all manifestations of narcissism. And another is feeling that you are unique. Because your uniqueness also requires special treatment, and you feel worthy of special treatment. Look at the narcissistic people in life, like some bosses, or some people—they hope that they can be unique, they can break all the rules, and everyone must indulge them. In the spiritual world, we don’t share the same cosmic view and formal logic as those “Muggles” outside. Our universe favors people like us; we must be treated specially. We don’t have to work hard; we don’t need to strive; we can get money or a partner effortlessly. Others have to struggle hard. Look, this is a feeling of being unique, therefore worthy of special treatment.

The key point I want to make today is that most people think narcissism is this kind—we tentatively call it “Grandiose Narcissism,” which is the most powerful. Actually, narcissism has another type that we call “Inferior Narcissism.” These two concepts were mentioned by Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck*, and they immediately answered many of my doubts.

Grandiose Narcissism is what we just said. Inferior Narcissism is like this: “I’m so miserable! I went through so much trauma; the world owes me.” I am… look, the biggest common point with the previous one is that I feel unique, but not because I am capable, but because I am inferior. I, I, I am miserable, I, I am suffering, I am a victim, so I am unique. I am unique, so I deserve special treatment. Similarly, the universe must give special attention. I, I went through so much, traversed so much suffering, experienced so much pain, understood so many things, so I don’t want to work hard and strive anymore. I also want to effortlessly receive the universe’s generosity. “Universe, give me your wallet!”

Look, Inferior Narcissism is also very common among people entering the spiritual world. Both types have many commonalities. They are all focused inward. When we add the mind-body discourse, it becomes: “I am the universe, I am unified with the universe,” there is no duality. We are non-dualism. What is it called? Holographic universe. My big universe and my little universe are unified, so I am the universe, I am the universe. Doesn’t that make the inward focus even more reasonable? Just focusing on yourself, letting others cleanse themselves.

So, a cult is a slap on the palm doesn’t make a sound. Look, narcissism is like this. People with grandiose narcissism will always attract people with inferior narcissism, and the two form a codependent, a pathological symbiotic relationship. Moreover, narcissism is actually a healthy developmental stage. When a child is born, it has no external world. The more it focuses inward, the more it feels that the whole world should satisfy its needs. This is a healthy thing because it is through this that it forms its own independent personality, satisfying its most basic needs. It can cry, it can throw a tantrum—this is what the omnipotent narcissism needs to do.

But slowly, through parental and social education, it can slowly learn that there are others outside. Not like the spiritual teachings say there is no one outside. There are others outside, and we need to get along with those outside. So, how does a child… it develops from a healthy omnipotent narcissism into what many of us are stuck in the narcissistic stage. That is, the child might be spoiled by the people at home, constantly spoiled, constantly narcissistic, and never fades away. Look, a narcissistic child has a very big characteristic: they are very bossy, “I want this, I want that,” and “No is not allowed.”

It actually builds a wall and hides its most vulnerable part. Because what is the child’s most vulnerable part? It’s being abandoned—parents don’t like them, they can’t eat, no one pays attention to them, no one touches them—these are the most basic needs. And a narcissistic child is always arrogant, very bossy. It slowly locks itself up, locks up its most vulnerable parts. And if it grows up, and it habitually uses this arrogance to lock up its vulnerability, it will become a grandiose narcissistic person. Similarly, if a child is not satisfied when it is young, and it is constantly in a state of scarcity, or a kind of narcissistic trauma, then it is not satisfied, and when it grows up, it constantly wants to compensate. Whether by seeking compensation from others, or by cultivating this, or by compensating itself, or it is also stuck in the process of constantly focusing on itself.

So, whether the narcissistic person is a cult leader or one of the followers, haha, they all have a strong need for control on the surface, a need to be recognized, to be seen, to be comforted by the touch of the soul. But are these their biggest needs? No. These narcissistic people, whether they are, and actually, all of us humans have another very important need that we are unwilling to admit or point to: the tendency towards uncertainty, and thus accepting our existence, accepting the fact that it is complex, uncertain, and uncontrollable. And accepting that reality. Look, most of the time we don’t consider this a direct, explicit need, but every one of us has this need, especially narcissists, they put this need at the very bottom. If we honestly go to the bottom and feel the ground beneath our feet, it is actually unstable. All the philosophies, spiritualities, and various ideas that support us are actually unstable; they all have loopholes, they are all riddled with holes. All philosophical ideas are constantly compensating for each other. After realizing this, your illusion of stability collapses, the things you firmly believe in collapse. And that is what we need—that is what is closer to living in reality, standing on the ground.

Feel it. And once you realize this, you won’t be so narcissistic. You might have a lot of mourning, a lot of sadness rushes up, but that sadness is compassion, a compassion for all things, or for many people we coexist with, a compassion for the situation. Then you naturally care. “Sigh, how is the climate now? Who is suffering in which place?” Even the news doesn’t focus on it, because the news focuses more on things that are fun or stimulating. You suddenly want to say, “Amidst so much uncertainty, I want to be a good person,” “I want to care about others.” So, earlier we said that avoiding joining a cult means admitting you have this tendency, and narcissism is the same. First, we admit that we might be attracted by this idea—that we are unique, and we must be treated specially. Narcissism is the same. When we boldly admit, “I do have this part,” or “I have this impulse that the whole world should treat me specially,” “the universe should treat me specially,” we put this out first, and then you can even indulge—let yourself think this way for a while. At some point, you will feel, “I’m not special. The whole world, tens of millions of people, 7 billion people, so many people are similar to me, and everyone lives in a similar context. I’m not that special. My talents aren’t mine.” I occasionally read someone else’s book and get some inspiration, but it’s not that much. I have these things, but they aren’t a reason for me to be superior to others, to deserve special treatment.

So, slowly, you first acknowledge, “I want to be treated specially,” and then slowly you feel, “I’m not special, I’m not special at all. I am just ordinary.” And ordinary—if you are narcissistic from the beginning, you are afraid of this ordinary thing. You are afraid of mediocrity, afraid of commonness. You want to be unconventional, you want to be boldly unconventional. You want to study things that others don’t like or don’t pay attention to. You want to do things that are counter-intuitive. But slowly, when you accept that ordinary is also part of you, your life becomes much simpler, much easier. You don’t need to constantly think, “I am different from those Muggles,” or “I must create something to lead everyone,” or “I must constantly prove myself,” or “I must prove myself.” I am not proving myself. So, the antidote to narcissism is ordinary—admitting that you are ordinary and common.

Okay, we come to Chapter Five: The Age of Selling Magic. Haha, I myself used to like this term, and I liked to call myself a magician. Today I have another little magic trick. Why is magic so captivating? Besides our love for Harry Potter, what else can we look at in today’s mind-body field? What kind of hybrid is this? What is its historical context? Look, today’s mind-body people, the deep spiritual people, like to detach from the historical context and talk about things as if they are cosmic truths.

How can cosmic truths be limited by such mundane things in time? They must be true from the beginning to the end of the universe, even without time, infinite—that is the truth. It is severely detached from history and politics. I even say something harsh: most people doing mind-body now haven’t studied properly before. How do they like to look at history and politics? Right? Heh. Even Academic Cat, many of them might be because they studied too much, and then they didn’t want to study anymore, so they started doing mind-body.

So, maybe I am like this—for a long time, I didn’t want to look at history and politics. We forgot that today’s version of mind-body has its historical context. I might sort it out another day. From the perspective of the entire history of religion, there really isn’t much new under the sun. Even the modern spiritual teachings, the seemingly cosmic attraction laws, are very old things. Humanity keeps liking these brainwashed things.

Let’s talk about the modern ones first, a short history. For example, the ones we see today, with the law of attraction as the main core, everything that has spread out—all the manifestation, Zero Limit, and One Thought Shift from the last 20 years. They are all based on a core idea: paying attention to the heart and the moving thought, paying attention to your thoughts, which determines many things, maintaining positivity. And if your negative thoughts, you must find a way to transform them, or cleanse them, or… well, ignore them, and you focus on what you want. This is the core of the law of attraction.

This system was proposed a few years ago, called Think and Grow Rich. Look, every decade, every 20 years, there is a book that leads the trend for 20 years, 30 years, and it sells millions of copies. You think the law of attraction is the first? No, it’s been in the Bible for thousands of years, and it’s the best-selling. Then in the 30s, there was one called Think and Grow Rich. Do you see how similar it is to now? You must change the thoughts that obstruct you from getting rich, and then you can become rich. Then in the 50s, there was The Power of Positive Thinking. And then after a while, in the 90s, there is Tony Robbins, the motivational master, right? He called it AWAKEN the giant within.

These books have similarities; they all became popular in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and they constantly adapt to the context of the era. In the Think and Grow Rich book from the 30s, its entire historical background is the Great Depression—the economy was very bad, and everyone wanted to get rich, but there was no way. Because it was a state-capitalist system, it naturally had a cycle of failure. And during that cycle, no one could find a solution; they had to wait for the cycle to pass.

But the book said that your positive thinking could make you rich, and how? That book became a huge hit. Then 20 years later, World War II happened. After WWII, the baby boomers returned home, and many wanted to return to the family, to achieve a moderate standard of living, to return to the family, to build good relationships, and at the same time, earn more money to support the family. This is the main content and historical background of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Then in the 90s, neoliberalism rose. Most Western countries didn’t care about the individual anymore; if you didn’t succeed, it was your own fault. This is the simplest version of neoliberalism. So, Tony Robbins, the motivational master, came out. You can achieve your highest potential. You don’t need to be a rich second generation; you can start from zero, and you can make yourself a millionaire, regardless of your education, your class, your cultural background.

This is the hope that Tony Robbins set for everyone. Look, it is also in the background of neoliberalism. Now, we are still in the background of neoliberalism, so the state’s welfare is absent, and the individual bears a lot of responsibility for taking care of themselves, taking care of the elderly, taking care of the children. So, the law of attraction is great. Look, the law of attraction makes the individual responsibility not a heavy burden.

Zero Limit says 100% responsibility. Wow, if you put it in the context outside of spirituality, society already makes you 100% responsible for yourself, and it still makes you 100% responsible. But because of this spiritual system, it first gives you a cosmic view, a worldview. You feel that you should be 100% responsible, that you should use your own thoughts to attract the life you want—how legitimate.

Look, the current generation of mind-body laws, besides the commonalities of focusing on what you want and focusing on positivity, it also has its own era characteristic: first, quantum physics has become a popular term, and almost all mind-body practitioners must use quantum physics to rationalize themselves—like the holographic universe, and the double-slit interference experiment.

Many people involved in things must understand this. It is used to support what? Quantum physics is used to support the observer influencing the observed. So, the world I observe can actually change like quantum physics. I can change it through the transformation of my thoughts, and the world I am observed in will change. Damn it, this is nonsense. If you slightly tell this to a quantum physicist, they will almost go crazy. Quantum physics is a phenomenon of the microscopic world; it doesn’t affect our macroscopic world. No matter how you observe a phenomenon, it won’t change. Sigh. And also, they will say that the universe is infinitely expanding, and the universe… look, did you notice? All mind-body teachings follow the most popular trends and scientific ideas of the present. They force themselves onto themselves and say, “The universe is infinitely expanding, and our thoughts, ourselves are part of the universe, and we are also infinitely expanding.” To put it bluntly, money can also expand infinitely, and our economy can also grow infinitely.

How does this sound so much like capitalism? Oh, so it is capitalism—a mind-body thought under this trend, not a spiritual paradise beyond capitalism, but it is included in, or at least interwoven with, capitalism and neoliberalism. Hmm, I’m so angry. Think about it, any of us, if we are not science majors, dare we casually quote things from bioengineering or chemical engineering? We don’t dare. We don’t dare to say things we don’t understand. But why is quantum physics so miserable? Why does everyone dare to say they understand a little bit of quantum physics? I am truly exhausted. Right? So, this is the first characteristic of the law of attraction today: quantum physics.

The second is the rise of social media. Look, before, the spread of knowledge was first carved on oracle bones, and then it needed to spread the gospel, so you had to go to school, and then they taught you books and scriptures. Then slowly, you could publish, you could have your own views, and then there was television, then video. Now everyone can have their own official account, video, community; everyone can have their own authority. So, the social media era is a highly narcissistic era.

And everyone feels, “The things I see are so similar to me. My worldview is like this.” And it conforms to the previous point: “I am the center of the universe, I am the only truly existing person in the universe, and others are NPCs,” that kind of illusion. This high homogeneity of social media easily forms small circles. And people in small circles—we call them communities now—easily tend to be similar. And slowly, the different voices, at first, might be accepted, but later, they also start to converge because of the pleasing mechanism and the belonging mechanism we mentioned earlier. So, once the community becomes relatively closed, and especially the discourse within the community—the words you use, the language you use, the metaphors you use—start to become similar, the community starts to stagnate. I feel very sensitive to this matter; I am very sensitive to the stagnation of language. This is why a few years ago, when I was in academia, especially in gender studies, a small faction of feminists, I was very enthusiastic at first, and then I realized, “Sigh, why are these people all speaking the same way? I don’t want to listen anymore.” Then I felt that it was starting to become an old zombie. So, I jumped out.

And now I have founded two communities: Circle in China and Octopus Awakening. It also started to solidify. So, I have left these two communities, and I am slowly exploring how to create more open and truly accommodating organizations for different opinions. I think my previous two communities were exploring this direction, but it seems that due to some structural reasons of the community, it still tends towards homogeneity. So, this is a question mark that I keep holding. The third characteristic is that consumerism becomes the driving force of manifestation. Look, in previous eras, it might be based on the idea of having to support the family, having to overcome the Great Depression. But now, it is a crazy consumption, and market marketing, and various means, and various sales, and consumerism is rampant. And if you don’t criticize it, you can only follow it. Sometimes it even brings you benefits like honey, and you think, “Hmm, I might still need some money,” or “I feel that spending money on a five-star hotel or something is reasonable. Others deserve it, why don’t I?” You start to think, “I must say these things.” So, consumerism is a big driving core of our contemporary mind-body field.

So, why do you say mind-body is an industry? Well, if you look at the data, you know that in 2022—last year—the entire mind-body industry, including yoga, meditation coaching, psychological counseling, various communities, and various fringe spiritual retreats, totaled 43.7 billion US dollars.

You think of such a huge market, such a big slice of the pie. Everyone wants to share it, and everyone wants to ride on the imprint of this era, including what we might talk about later regarding AI replacing human labor, and the fact that our life in this society has very little positive meaning. Capital likes these things? That’s combined with the social media we mentioned earlier, combined with the fact that our life is too uncertain, too without reliance.

Look at these things mentioned earlier: capital, social media, the hope of certainty will be generated. Mind-body, as an industry, constantly innovates, constantly replaces itself, constantly repairs itself, and finds many of its own loopholes, and constantly optimizes itself to become a more self-consistent field. Look, our current astrology and human design can justify themselves, they cannot be falsified—these non-scientific things are particularly popular. I’m not saying science is good, it’s just that science, its premise is that it can be falsified. You can say today’s formula is wrong, but astrology and human design can never be falsified. But what contemporary people need is something that cannot be falsified to give us a sense of certainty. Our life is too miserable, we are too uncomfortable, we need this.

I particularly like a quote from a YouTube blogger called Frog Dao Sheng, because he himself was once a Christian and then came out. Many people commented after his explanation, saying, “If you don’t have a little faith, a little reliance, won’t you lose the meaning of life?” He has a quote I particularly like: “If your spiritual world is too desolate, whether you believe in God or not is irrelevant.” He basically says, “It’s because you read too little.” I think that’s it. You seek certainty, you seek meaning, the simplest way, the lazy way of not thinking—is to do astrology, is to do human design.

If you read a little more, you can also find certain comfort in uncertainty, you can reconcile with uncertainty, and constantly overturn your ideas, constantly think. That is also a kind of certainty. But this path is harder to walk. To be blunt, it is the path of the philosopher. The path of the philosopher requires privilege. What is the privilege of our current world? It is time, it is leisure time and energy. Most people, after working 996, where do they want to read books and think philosophically? They want to do some mind-body stuff, and that can help them sleep. So, go to sleep! Who goes to think? So, that’s why mind-body is also a very good tool of governance. Everyone is busy working, and they casually use mind-body to soothe themselves. What a perfect social governance structure.

So, this leads to a very important point that I want to make: mind-body in the Chinese context is particularly toxic because it is completely depoliticized. I call it “Chinese-style mind-body capitalism.” What is politics? It’s simple: the arrangement of public life. The politics we learned in primary school, it’s called ideology. Why do we hate politics, don’t want to participate in politics? Because we haven’t had a positive experience of actively arranging public life. There is no positive experience. Look, even the smallest public life is politics, even if it’s a neighborhood committee. But Chinese-style mind-body capitalism, it is completely depoliticized by consumption, and by love. Your family, and you return to the family, and you do wealth—the political context is completely detached.

So, let’s go back to the development of spiritualism earlier in the West. It has always been related to political demands. For example, during the peak in the 60s, the hippie movement in the West, like The Beatles, and the Woodstock festival, they actually had demands, such as anti-war and social equality. In 2020, during the Trump-Biden election, there was even a spiritual writer named Marianne Williamson who ran for president.

In a less extreme environment than China, some schools of spiritualism—and spiritualism is a big concept—some are completely detached from politics, while others are willing to stand up to provide a new solution, a new idea for our politicization and political environment. For example, this Marianne, she feels that the current two sides are arguing too extremely, and they are too much in their own circles. We need a spiritual person who has this cosmic unity, but at the same time, we must have principles. Of course, she has a team. Of course, it’s not a complete “everything is the best arrangement,” and she will stand up and say, “I hope spiritualism can provide some solutions for politics.” So, at least she made that attempt. Although she eventually withdrew, hahaha.

But if we completely feel that spiritualism is detached from politics, and from issues like feminism, environmentalism, and labor, I think it’s abnormal. It’s not. If we belong to an interconnected society, then spiritualism can naturally integrate with these things. But the version of spiritualism that is most popular now, called “submission,” called “everything is the best arrangement,” called “everything is self-cultivation,” “self-cleansing.” Wow, that’s too easy to manage these people.

Okay, finally, how to cultivate critical thinking ability? Of course, this is a bit contradictory; if you have critical thinking ability, you don’t need me to teach you this chapter. But I will mention several points that I think are very important. First, read more books. You really have to read more books. Not just mind-body books, because I know there is a tendency in the mind-body field—if you look at your bookshelf, there are only mind-body books, then you really need to start reading more history, philosophy, and hard science. Read more empirical stuff, and look for more independent news sources. And regarding hard science, if you are a liberal arts student and you don’t understand it, it’s okay; you can flip through it. Let your left brain get active. For a long time, your body is in it, your right brain is developed, but your left brain is not. This is a kind of overcorrection. Our mainstream society might be too developed in the left brain, and if you don’t understand it, it’s okay; you can be permeated by its logic, its rigor, which is also a way to activate the left brain. And if you can slightly understand it with your brainpower, that’s even better.

And if you are truly curious about quantum physics, you must read real quantum physics, not that fake spiritual quantum physics, pfft. Then you can also learn about basic philosophy, political science, anthropology, sociology, and logic, and linguistics—these things that understand the underlying structure of the human world. It will give you a framework, and you will know that when you hear a new thing, you can connect it with other knowledge. You won’t think, “Oh, this is amazing, it seems to be the truth.” You… Our world has thousands of years. So many philosophers, so many thinkers, step by step laid the foundation, and developed a little new idea based on the ideas of their predecessors. How can you be so amazing that you can completely break away from their ideas and create your own new idea, and discover a cosmic truth? It’s not that simple. If you learn a little philosophy and history/politics, you know these things are built up little by little. And besides reading these books, I also suggest everyone read useless books, because people in the personal growth circle love to read various technical, various… anyway, methods of self-improvement—it’s also an addiction. So, read more poetry, read sci-fi, read martial arts novels, read things that don’t improve yourself, to balance your information sources. Besides reading more books, the second point I want to talk about is colliding with people, debating more. Look, people in the mind-body field avoid debating because there is a kind of spiritual ego that says, “We are one,” “We are all unified,” “The world is harmonious.” Whatever you have, I can integrate it into you; whatever you have, we can tolerate all emotions, all thoughts. So, we end up with this thing, which is another kind of enlightenment, a paste. It blurs things, and you feel that if you don’t think deeply, you feel that things can be compatible.

P—meaning many things, you believe it can be compatible in the end, but the premise is that there is a huge rupture and many incompatibilities and dislikes. Only after debating, after fighting to the death, will they merge. This is Hegel’s idea of thesis and antithesis. First, you rupture, then you repair. Don’t be afraid of this rupture. People in the mind-body field are so afraid of rupture. How much are there? About the trauma of conflict. You pretend that you are especially harmonious, and you say, “I don’t mind, I don’t care if others criticize me, I don’t want to argue with people,” how noble you are, how elegant. I always feel that this is a band-aid. So, debating means solving it. It means you must first express it, like I am doing now—I am going crazy, I said a bunch of things. It doesn’t matter, don’t censor too much, just express it first. Someone will definitely disagree, and you can’t make everyone like you, and it’s okay if it’s biased. The things I said today are mostly intentionally biased. I can’t round everything off, and I don’t want to. I just want to bring out my biased things, and welcome corrections from me, welcome self-correction. I will slowly integrate it. Look at what I said today, I almost hate Academic Cat. Of course, he has things that benefit me; this is not a justified hatred. I might slowly integrate it. Sigh, I might not feel the same anger as today. It will happen. But I can’t say, because it will happen, all these things I said today. So, you find a very interesting thing called independent thinking—it is not achieved alone. Please remember this: independent thinking is not achieved alone; it must be achieved through collision. You must express it, and debate with people, discuss, explore, impact, rupture, and then merge again. This is true independent thinking.

And this is the trap of our current mind-body field: forcing every person back into their own narrow world, not caring about politics, not caring about others. Once your own logic is self-consistent, you don’t want to listen to other people’s logic anymore. You constantly self-cleanse, constantly self-reflect. You cannot recognize other aspects of society; you cannot view the world from the political perspective of other societies. It is a process that makes us lose the ability to think independently.

And the third point is that we must maintain a soft heart. What does soft mean? If you are narcissistic, you lock up your heart. Whether it’s due to inferiority or grandeur, your soft part is locked up. So, to be soft means you will feel pain. Seeing a forest fire, seeing someone suffer, seeing a house collapse, you will feel pain. You just let that pain linger a little. Because I used to have a habit: when I saw such painful news, I wanted to turn it off; I didn’t want it to affect my mood for a long time. To a certain extent, this is the case. You can’t let it carry you away, and make you depressed for a whole day, two days, three days. So, I think the method is constantly learning how to adjust your nervous system so that it can coexist with this suffering, this pain in society, instead of just clicking an ‘X’ and turning off this pain. Look, this is a very different path. When you close your heart, your heart becomes hard. That is your most precious thing; don’t defend yourself. So, one day, if you don’t feel pain when seeing these things, it’s not because you achieved enlightenment, or you awakened, or you ascended to heaven. It’s because you cultivated it, you cultivated yourself to death.

If we say that very few people achieve enlightenment, this world is soft, and at the same time, it has a very strong side, and it can be regulated, but its hand is soft. It doesn’t lock itself up. When it sees suffering and pain, it still sheds tears. It’s not like, “I already know it is the way of the universe,” “the entire operating principle,” so these things won’t move me, and I just cultivate myself, I just cleanse myself."

Oh, this is also what they like to say: if there is war, famine, strong suffering, or pain in the world, then my unconscious, my inner self also has these things. And I must cleanse the desire or the memory and habit of fighting with others, conquering others, in order for the world to be better. Pfft, damn it, I’m so angry. Right? So, don’t cultivate it like this. If you cultivate it like this, you cultivate yourself to death. Sigh, this is also… I’m not impatient, but I’m impatient. Why? Look, if I say all these things, Academic Cat will just smile calmly; he definitely won’t get angry, because anger is what a cultivated person would do. He would definitely say, “You are overthinking,” or “You are like this suffering,” and he wouldn’t say anything, he would silently go back to cleanse it, and he would also make me cleanse it, if he talks to me.

Anyway, today is just a crazy monologue of mine, which is the end of my Deep Love for Wealth. Why am I ending this podcast? Because I feel that the atmosphere presented in the entire podcast is a kind of—although I initially said I was an atheist, I have slowly started to solidify my thinking. So, I feel that this podcast cannot continue. If I continue, I will still be talking about God, the universe, and so on. I feel like I’ve said enough about those things, and those things definitely have helped. The many meditation audios earlier, many people feel they helped. So, if it helped, then it helped.

See you in a different Bubble.

Hahaha, hopefully, that bubble has more ventilation. Right? Because I cannot escape all bubbles. I just hope that whatever I do in the future is not so closed off. Also, if you don’t know, I have actually closed the Octopus Awakening community, so you can’t join it anymore. But Circle China is still active. I am not the main leader in it, but there are a few people I trust who are acting as administrators, so I hope that if you are interested, you can join Circle. It is relatively more open and can accommodate different ideas. And if you like me, you can support me with Ai Fa Dian (a platform for supporting creators), especially since I am in a transition period, re-brewing my new blog plan, or maybe other future projects. The hope is to break away from some of the drawbacks of the mind-body circle, but it might still accommodate some, because after so many years of learning, there are still many valuable things, so I am still thinking about what form and what content it will be. So, during this brewing period, I hope you generously give me some financial support.

Recently, I haven’t done many cases, because I feel that in this period of change, I haven’t met new people. I hope to leave more white space for my own time, allowing new ideas to emerge and create more freely. Just like I said earlier, the most luxurious and biggest privilege is time. And I am willing to give myself so much luxurious privilege. So, if you are willing to support my process of independent thinking, I hope you can support me on Ai Fa Dian or directly find my WeChat official account and find my tipping QR code, and you can support me after any article. Hmm, speaking of this, I feel that my current view of wealth is not just about how many luxury goods you can buy, or how much liquidity you have today. I feel that being able to afford to be disliked is the greatest freedom. I can afford being disliked, I can afford public speaking—meaning I can afford to express my true views in public. I feel this is the greatest wealth, including the time I just mentioned. Okay, well, that’s all for today. See you in the future. Bye-bye.