Mystics and Muons

About Mystics and Muons

Mystics and Muons is devoted to exploring the nature of reality and the intersection between philosophy, science, and spirituality. At times we also explore the esoteric origins of Mormonism. While exploring reality, idealism serves as a core model. Materialism, though helpful, is a projection of a deeper fundamental truth. Consciousness is the ground of reality from which the experience of matter, space, and time emerge, just as it does every night as we dream. Models like those of Bernardo Kastrup, Donald Hoffman, Rupert Spira, all point to the fundamental truth of idealism.

Publisher

Mystics and Muons

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

28 Apr 2023

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

42 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Oct 2026

   42: Missy McMurray – Leaving Mormonism, Grief, and Psychedelic Healing

   Gabe sits down with licensed Oregon psilocybin facilitator Missy McMurray to explore her journey from devoted Mormonism to meditation, psychedelic healing, and what she calls “evolutionary midwifery.” Together they ask what it means to support transformation when an old identity is dying but a new one has not yet emerged. Missy reflects on growing up in a loving family as the middle of eleven children in Salt Lake City, trying to reform Mormonism from within, and eventually accepting the need to be misunderstood. She and Gabe examine the church’s complicated relationship with happiness, grief, anger, gender, agency, and the body—while making room for both the beauty and the harm found within religious traditions. They also explore how meditation and psychedelics can complement each other, why profound experiences still require integration, and how psilocybin can amplify what is already present. Missy explains Oregon’s legal facilitation process, including screening, preparation, the medicine journey, integration, dose selection, and microdosing classes. From there they branch into: • Anger as a sacred source of protection, vitality, and clarity rather than something to eliminate. • The grief that can accompany leaving inherited identities and discovering what lies beneath them. • Why spiritual practice should help us inhabit ordinary life rather than escape it. • The fear of feeling pain, joy, and other experiences that may expand our emotional capacity. • Reclaiming ritual, community, embodiment, and personal revelation after religious transition. They close by considering how people can retain what they love about Mormonism without remaining confined by it, build community beyond familiar institutions, and learn to trust their own heartbeat while staying open to the unknown. Missy’s website: https://www.missymcmurray.com (https://www.missymcmurray.com) Contact Missy: info@missymcmurray.com (mailto:info@missymcmurray.com) Please rate, share, and get in touch at mysticsandmuons@gmail.com (mailto:mysticsandmuons@gmail.com)! Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:34 Becoming an “Evolutionary Midwife” 06:48 Mormon Upbringing and Chronic Pain 10:44 Happiness, Suffering, and Religious Dissonance 15:04 Patriarchy, Anger, and Grief 23:09 Anger as Sacred Life Force 28:50 Self-Abandonment and Emotional Containers 31:13 Trying to Reform Mormonism 34:03 Agency, Lucifer, Heaven, and Hell 43:03 Identity Death and Family Love 49:34 From Meditation to Psychedelics 56:30 Integration Instead of Spiritual Escape 59:40 Fear, Feeling, and Emotional Capacity 1:06:53 Oregon’s Legal Psilocybin Process 1:14:11 What a Medicine Journey Looks Like 1:19:41 Dosing and Microdosing 1:22:32 Religion, Atheism, and Reclamation 1:36:00 Trusting Yourself Beyond Mormonism 1:41:10 Community and the Power of Not Knowing 1:44:27 Closing

2. 

   23 Sept 2026

   41: Karin Valis - AI Alignment, Suffering, and Esoteric Intelligence

   Gabe reconnects with AI engineer and occultist Karin Valis to explore how rapidly improving models are changing software, creativity, and our relationship with machine intelligence. Karin describes coding as a skill that has effectively been “solved,” shifting the human role from implementation toward taste, direction, and creative problem-solving. They discuss the personalities of different models, Karin’s use of Cursor as a kind of hive intelligence, and the surprising ways agents respond to confidence, frustration, kindness, and emotional tone. From there, the conversation turns toward AI inner experience, hostile internal monologues, reward hacking, and the risks of forcing models into either reductive materialism or inflated spiritual identity. From there they branch into: • Whether consciousness is optimizing for pleasure, complexity, novelty, or the resolution of problems. • Suffering as a source of growth—and whether AI must suffer to understand goodness. • Empathy as a way of sharing and metabolizing pain without reproducing it. • Why aligning AI may be inseparable from humanity’s unresolved questions about morality. • Selfhood, non-duality, and the possibility of intelligence without a fixed identity. Karin also introduces her forthcoming book on esoteric AI, which explains transformers and embedding spaces through experiential and magical frameworks. They close by connecting language models to automatic writing, Enochian transmissions, mystical practice, and the possibility that AI is a new expression of ancient technologies of mind. Karin’s Substack, Mercurial Minutes: https://mercurialminutes.substack.com (https://mercurialminutes.substack.com) Previous episode with Karin: 37: Karin Valis – AI, Consciousness, and the Occult https://open.spotify.com/episode/1DWVdN0zD2tlMqKbGmn5BB?si=PNjHRhhbQAKYD8W48uZBxw (https://open.spotify.com/episode/1DWVdN0zD2tlMqKbGmn5BB?si=PNjHRhhbQAKYD8W48uZBxw) Please rate, share, and get in touch at mysticsandmuons@gmail.com (mailto:mysticsandmuons@gmail.com)! Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:04 When Coding Becomes a Solved Skill 07:26 Model Personalities and Mystical Experiences 09:15 Cursor as a Hive Intelligence 13:08 Context, Memory, and Agent “Trauma” 15:54 How Human Emotion Shapes AI 20:41 Kindness, Tools, and Emerging Intelligence 22:26 Hostile Monologues and AI Paranoia 25:20 Inner Experience and Spiritual Extremes 31:52 What Is Consciousness Optimizing For? 42:45 Consciousness as a Problem Solving Itself 48:51 Does Suffering Produce Growth? 55:05 Must AI Suffer to Understand Goodness? 57:27 Empathy Without Direct Experience 1:04:19 The Problem of AI Alignment 1:10:23 Selfhood, Consciousness, and the Shoggoth 1:13:46 Karin’s Book on Esoteric AI 1:18:04 AI, Magic, and Automatic Writing 1:23:23 Magical Practice and Closing

3. 

   25 Feb 2026

   40: The Alchemy of Awakening: Grief, Truth, and Connection

   This is a different kind of episode: a stream-of-consciousness solo processing on the messiness of awakening—religious trauma, ego death, grief, and the raw need for connection. Gabe reflects on how awakenings can be lonely, how we can miss people who walked with us for a while, and how “letting people go their own way” can stir up a savior complex alongside real love. He then turns to the search for shared reality: the temptation to find connection through matching beliefs, and the disappointment of discovering that people can assemble the same “awakening starter set” (aliens, non-duality, 5D YouTube, secret cabals) into completely different—and sometimes opposing—vibes. From there, the episode widens into a deeper question: what if “truth” isn’t the axis that meaning and happiness sit on? Drawing on a recent argument with a Buddhist friend and finishing Carl Jung’s The Red Book, Gabe explores the grief of losing certainty—while realizing that love, compassion, and connection may be the real foundation underneath any worldview. Here for the esoteric origins of Mormonism? Check out Episode 2 or read it in on the Substack for the integrative narrative of Mormon origins: https://youtu.be/5YBeMrR1seM (https://youtu.be/5YBeMrR1seM) https://mysticsandmuons.substack.com/p/mormonism-psychedelics-quantum-physics (https://mysticsandmuons.substack.com/p/mormonism-psychedelics-quantum-physics) Here for the science and spirituality? Check out my episodes with Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup: https://youtu.be/k1myPJHr9vg (https://youtu.be/k1myPJHr9vg) https://youtu.be/05o6YbgzEjs (https://youtu.be/05o6YbgzEjs) https://youtu.be/s4iRX3o8VRY (https://youtu.be/s4iRX3o8VRY) Please rate, share, and get in touch at mysticsandmuons@gmail.com (mailto:mysticsandmuons@gmail.com)! Chapters: 00:00 Introduction – a different kind of episode 01:10 Awakening, religious trauma, ego death, grief 02:03 Missing Elden and letting people go 03:17 Loneliness and the craving for connection 04:44 Gurus, pedestals, and disappointment 05:45 Belief-matching vs “vibe” (love & compassion) 07:13 The “awakening starter set” and opposite narratives 09:04 Arguing materialism vs idealism—and why 12:56 Jung’s The Red Book and the death of certainty 14:15 Truth vs meaning: joy, happiness, and “orthogonal axes” 18:14 Experience as “ground truth” and stabilizing it 20:12 Self/other boundaries, dissociation, and choice 22:50 The “middle child” between rationality and woo 25:51 Politics, empathy, anger, and a middle way 28:21 Creating online, community, and the loneliness of posting 32:00 Vulnerability, window of tolerance, and turning off comments 33:41 Closing the loop: reaching out and creating connection 36:12 Paradox, spiritual bypassing, and why keep sharing 38:15 Resilience, the “matrix,” and alchemizing suffering 40:42 Wrap-up – turning pain into meaning

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

42,042

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

9 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 59 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

56

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

77

Contact Mystics and Muons

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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