REALITY+

i picked up a copy of based on a true story by paul anleitner after seeing a great review in an email or social post from john mark mcmillan. it promised a hopeful message for a struggling world. JMM is a musician i’ve enjoyed off and on, especially when he was in his deconstruction phase, so i thought i’d give it a go although i was skeptical of my hopeful feeling and the endorsement of an artist who has a toe dipped in charismatic christianity.

the book promises a “reboot of meaning.” as someone who walks around this planet with a noticeable meaning deficit, felt in the center of my chest most days, i perked up. maybe this book will shine some light in the dark. often, the question “what’s the point of all this?” sits quietly at the back of my throat as people talk to me about the humidity or the trump administration or how they can’t wait to get married or divorced. so to hear that this author claimed to discover a beacon of direction was alluring. i’ve been disappointed by these prophetic voices before so i cracked the book open with more than a little trepidation.

the postmodern problem

i found myself relating to paul’s assessment of the cultural slide into cynicism and it’s negative by-products. a lot of people have deconstructed their origin stories and religions, found through therapy how their upbringing left them with trauma, and consistently ingest conflicting stories through all forms of media about what matters. we now collectively know about the threats to our environment and covid shook us to the core but we never answered the questions we all started asking.

while we grew up on the story that we were the main character who could shoot for the stars and become one, sincere pursuit is the quickest way to be labeled cringe these days*.* the only route that avoids all judgement from the communal surveillance is to be a sideline critic and champion of irony. committing to a way of being is lame. truth is relative - how many more times can we hear someone on instagram say to “find your truth.” hell, the president started a site called truth social where he wouldn’t be banned for his often violent and plainly baseless assertions. if you post something sincere online you have to joke that you’re being an influencer so everyone knows you’re in on the fact that society is ridiculous.

paul directly named some of the aches i feel in the tension of post-modern society where i am supposed to be a successful island while also looking like i’m not trying or doing anything unsanctioned. “in the postmodern cultural grammar, the greatest sin isn’t being wrong—it’s being earnest and sincere without a proper disclaimer.” that hits so hard for me as did the phrase “sledgehammer of deconstruction” which i do feel like i’ve been swinging at any story that’s taken hold of me.

i’ve looked for salvation in tons of stories only to be let down, to the point where i resonate with the idea that i’m living in an episode of seinfeld - a show about nothing but, to my horror, i’m the main character.

he sites this ache as the catalyst for the resurgence of nostalgia based obsessions which i thoroughly enjoyed because it seems like he and i had a near identical childhood. our evangelical parents didn’t let us watch harry potter because it was witchcraft and our musical taste expanded only as far as the shelves of lifeway christian book stores which thankfully contained bands like creed, underoath, and demon hunter. i got to see creed on their big summer reunion tour in 2025 and it was possibly the best concert of my life.

in the landscape of shattered stories and irony we have started looking in the rearview for times that felt like things mattered. more andy griffith, less seinfeld. we want heart and guts. we want something wholesome, sincere, grounded. the things we used to find meaning in that gave our life purpose seem weak or worse - fake. i left religion because i compared it to the facts and found it lacking. i left yoga because it was so lofty and air-headed in a different direction. i left behind all i used to hold dear and found myself in a space devoid of meaning and purpose.

i couldn’t agree more with his diagnosis, that we are in a crisis of meaning, which is why i found his proposed solution so nauseating.

see a scary world? try closing your eyes.

the second half of the book is marred by the words “vibe shift” and “zeitgeist” appearing so many times in such proximity that he must have had a keyboard shortcut for them. that is a petty annoyance of mine - but the real issue i take is with paul’s solution to the absence of meaning in our ever lonelier lives.

his suggestion, in a nutshell, is to go back to church.

the answer to our negative stories and lack of purpose is to return to our wishful thinking and believe there is a higher power - a story of all stories, pattern of all patterns, because it feels like it’s true. because it’s life-giving. because church makes you feel a sense of community. it’s good for humanity and makes us want to flourish. admittedly, i’m not convinced that humanity flourishing is a good idea or something that is sustainable.

paul’s invitation is to return to your mothers home for psychological comfort - to curl up in her lap and suckle on her tit despite two truths you’ve encountered: one, you are an adult who needs solid food. and two, the milk has long since run dry.

i don’t have a guiding story because i’ve seen too much. i’ve deconstructed the stories i grew up in and still find them hollow to the point that i cannot believe them.

he literally suggests, as a remedy, to experience what changes in your life when you live “as if” the stories of the bible were true.

he’s saying with a straight face: we have to pretend.

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here i was hoping for something i could cling onto as an escape from the despair i can be plagued with. and his answer is to pretend i never unraveled the bullshit of christianity, capitalism, or the american dream.

feeling thirsty? have you experienced what happens in your life when you tip up an empty glass “as if” it were full?

the respectable portion of his analysis ended midway in the book when he started doing the classic charismatic preacher bit. before getting into his long, breathy, prophetic rants about a coming or present cultural “vibe shift” (and boy do charismatic pastors LOVE to talk about a “shift”) he attempts to fleece the reader with stories of healing and prosperity. it’s like he knew my guard was down after tearing up to creed’s “my sacrifice” when the prior chapter prompted me to play the record front to back and scream my lungs out in the car.

but the fleece felt all too familiar.

he sited his friends auto-immune issues magically diminishing when they returned to prayer. healing.. really? come on man.

then he hit us with this little gem of scientific inquiry:

as proof that there is an underlying Truth to the Pattern of existence as exhibited in the resurrected christ, we have no further to look than the feeling that it is true. if you search inwardly, you can feel a pull to the Truth.

the arrogance required to imagine you can correctly intuit answers to questions about god and reality and the beginning of the universe is impressive.

if a doctor came to you and said he feels like you have cancer, wouldn’t you want maybe one or two other reasons they arrived at this conclusion? you might think this isn’t a fair example for me to site because it’s a material medical issue - but is THE FATE OF YOUR ETERNITY **not a primary concern that has clearly avoidable and undesirable outcomes unless there is major intervention?

wouldn’t you want that to rest on a fact, not on vibes?

but no, paul is satisfied with vibes, pretending it’s true, and taking the batteries out of his flashlight now that he’s seen how scary the cave is. it is perhaps better to wander through the dark than to realize you’re nowhere significant.

oh, but the smartest guy he knows is doing it. ahhhh now i’m sold. if his smart friend starting going to church again, there’s no arguing that!!

we are an unfortunately gullible species of primate.

three quarters of the way into the book, paul has abandoned the cloaks hiding his intellectual dishonesty. he starts making decrees, bordering on benedictions, about the Truth of the Story of Stories of which you must reach into your Internal Knowing to experience. what a thrill it must be, telling the future.

here are some such nuggets of his wisdom:

”the finite human being is made for communion with the Transcendent”

no hospitials have been built by someone using psychedelics for healing because ”it can’t be done and it never will be”

his friend ashley was haunted by “demonic darkness” before she repented and became “christ haunted.”

“even after a relatively short sprint of attempting to build post-Christian utopias, we realized that the further we moved away from that story, the worse our society got.”

“the true Pattern always functions incarnationally”

paul sounds remarkably like a man who hasn’t swiped through someone else’s algorithm.

he is making bold claims based on the very issue he called out as relativism just pages before. he says we left “the Truth” to “find our personal truth” in baseless stories and that left us divided. but his literal recommendation is to base your belief in one story on whether or not the vibes are right. can he not see that basing your belief on vibes and building a “personal relationship with jesus” is no different than a yogi saying she feels kundalini swirling through her asshole and confirms it is a message from Spirit?

reality+

my great disappointment is that paul promises a fresh take. he invites us into something new, but points to the cave we just crawled out of and says go back into the dark where it was at least warm and cozy before we could see what the walls were made of.

to soothe our questions, he merely offers us a blindfold.

i was bummed because I deeply resonate with his description of the anti-story, the cynicism of the age we find ourselves in. i agree that we need sincerity and wholesomeness and grounding. he spoke to a younger part of me who is secretly still on the hunt for an overarching story to belong to. i’ve felt so certain before that there is ultimate Truth and i can find it - somewhere. i would love for there to be a clear cut path through reality showing me the right way to live my life. it can be so god damned confusing and uncertain sometimes to sort through the options laid in front of you as a human on spaceship earth.

is there overall meaning to life?
is there a purpose to my existence?
am i missing my purpose?
where is it all headed?
will i find relief from the anxiety and dread i can experience?

these questions have plagued me throughout my life with the only brief reprieve happening on heroic mushroom trips where all illusion of self and meaning are shattered. sometimes on meditation retreats too. other times sitting on a sidewalk in an old city or the rare times i'm fully present to my life.

finding a purpose for your life feels simultaneously like the anxiety of a teenager and the dry, stale coffee breath of a midlife crisis. a pastor who never got his flock off the ground. a bored barber who does the same haircut over and over until he’s left wondering why the hell it matters.

i have searched for answers to these questions in the bible, the bhagavad gita, the buddha, ram dass, quickbooks, instagram, and psychedelic mushrooms; friends, pastors, bankers, clients, lovers, and now this book.

the answer resounds: i don’t know. maybe. probably not. perhaps i could consider asking a better question.

sam harris posed a brilliant question - if there were no humans on earth and the lions and plants and rocks had their current concentrations of consciousness, what would it all mean? would there be anyone to ask or care about the question?

questions of meaning are all the false, unanswerable questions of religion and philosophy that human minds have concocted. it’s a weird hobby that only we do. wondering about our purpose is a precisely human condition of which the symptoms are many - depression, mania, panic, dread, suicide, arrogance, totalitarianism.

sometimes when a question doesn’t have a clear answer, it doesn’t mean you haven’t found it and must search harder, rather it could mean you’re asking the wrong questions.

why do we need something to lay on top of reality to make life worth living? religion is reality plus.

would my partnership be more meaningful if there was promise of an eternity of partnership in an afterlife? obviously that would cheapen what we have right now. no, our relationship is made abundantly more meaningful to me in it’s rarity and the fact that it has an expiration date.

i agree with paul saying we need communion with other humans - i just can’t see how the basis of that community must be wishful thinking and willful ignorance.

people often critique athiests for offering no solution to the problem of life’s meaning. yes, we offer no imaginary jam to pretend you spread on your toast. and that’s because we think the toast stands out on its own.

needing an imagined afterlife or an answer to an existential question is a hobby manifested by anxiety. it’s the OCD i spend so much time and money treating. it’s worry about death, about your identity, about your own suffering and that of others.

in the last few years the goal of my “spiritual” practice has been to drop these questions. to see what my mind is like when i sit still long enough to let the sediment of ideology and concept settle to the bottom of the pond. it's quite peaceful in the brief moment's i've experienced their absence.

when i turned the lights on in my cave, i found it to be empty. life, bare and raw, pouring into the entrance. in fact, i wasn’t in a cave.

i just had my hands over my eyes.

i’ve enjoyed the teachings of athiests and zen buddhists who point out that access to the richness of reality is just past the layer of story we add to it.

this is the point people tend to find nihilism. they say wait - nothing matters? and we say yes, nothing matters, ultimately.

you can respond to that realization with horror and depression, returning your hands over your eyes as paul suggests, or you can step into the full, horrifically bright light of day and marvel at the fact that anything is here at all and it’s not nothing. we have no fucking idea why most of this is here. but we certainly are. if that isn’t liberating, i don’t know the definition.

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so what do i find meaningful?

investigating reality, turning over every rock to see what’s under it. loving my partner and my people and getting invested in their lives. passing on skills i’ve developed to other beings in search of tools to secure their own survival. sitting here on a quiet evening writing this while karl draws tattoos. helping people like the way their hair looks. taking care of the only body i will ever experience. and chocolate. and tea. and pictures... just to name a few things.

paul invites us to resurrect a dead story, to subscribe to reality+ to find meaning in our lives by pretending we believe alongside our blindfolded brethren.

if you need something more than reality to find life compelling,
if life itself is not miraculous and mysterious and shocking and awe inspiring enough for you,
if the grandness of the cosmos doesn’t make you feel sea sick,
if you need the promise of escape into an afterlife to find this one meaningful,

you may not be paying attention.