Threshold

This foundational episode marks the beginning of a new journey. It is the threshold between a world of given answers and the path of unknowing. Host Daniel Curtis outlines the mission and practice for the path ahead: a commitment to sharing one short, potent story each week—a "mirror"—designed to catalyze the profound work of self-reflection and the rediscovery of inner authority.

To establish the stakes, Daniel shares the personal, numinous experiences that initiated this entire project. Beginning with a disquieting vision of a luxury hotel surrounded by shanties, he recounts the burning question that shattered his worldview. This journey inward led to a powerful, alchemical initiation and the realization of the divine spark within all living things.

From this new understanding, he introduces the framework for the podcast: a diagnosis of the Two Great Illusions that cause our collective suffering, and the mission to dissolve them not with doctrine, but with the quiet, transformative power of mirrors.

Key Concepts & Themes

• The Two Great Illusions: The central diagnosis of the spiritual sickness of our age.
• The Hollow Senex: The great external illusion; the belief in the legitimacy of performative, soulless authority and control systems.
• The Cancer of Eros: The great internal illusion; the belief in our fundamental separation from our own soul and the soul of the world.
• Mirrors, Not Answers: The core methodology of the project. Using parables and stories not as dogma, but as reflective surfaces for individuals to see their own patterns and truths.
• Inner Authority & Self-Governance (Korm): The ultimate goal of the work. The process of moving from reliance on external systems to governance by an integrated, internal center.
• The Numinous as Catalyst: The understanding that true, paradigm-shifting change is often initiated by direct, personal, and transformative spiritual experience.

Episode Link

Transcript

Hello and welcome to The (all) Unknowing. If you've been with me for a while, you'll notice that things are about to change. If you're new here, then you've arrived at the start of a new road. And it only seems right to begin this new chapter with a story about a road.

There was once a man who traveled a well-known road to a faraway land. His journey brought him to the most luxurious and immaculate hotel he had ever seen. He'd been traveling for a long time, and he was proud of the journey, proud of the destination. He checked in, went straight to his room, and fell asleep.

The next morning, he woke up feeling rested and accomplished. He walked to the window, pulled back the heavy curtains to admire the view, and his heart stopped.

In every direction, for as far as he could see, there were shanties, thousands of them, crammed along the sides of the very road he had just traveled.

He saw people living in extreme poverty, suffering in the heat, all in the shadow of the magnificent tower he was standing in.

He was that man.

I was that man.

And as I stood there, looking out that window, one question burned in my mind, a question that would ultimately undo my entire world. What has brought me to this majestic place, such that I sit here in comfort while so many live and die out there in this extreme heat and poverty? That question set me on a different path, a more difficult, mountainous road to climb.

That journey inward led me to a moment I can only describe as a waking vision. I was sitting in my chair, my eyes closed, meditating on that very question. In my mind's eye, I held up a torch in the darkness.

And I was met with the brightest light I have ever seen. It was overwhelming, disorienting. And when the light finally dissipated, it coalesced into a face. Then a lion approached me from the darkness and roared. It was a sound so real it shook my very being. My first instinct was to open my eyes, but I held steady. The lion circled me.

Its presence an immense weight, before walking on and disappearing back into the void.

Then, a voice asked me what I was seeking. And without a moment's hesitation, I answered: Truth. The response came back instantly. I am Truth. And in that moment, the spirit of a tiger leapt into me.

My hair stood on end, my entire reality tilted on its axis. And in the aftershock of that encounter, a new understanding began to dawn. A simple, devastating one. That the divine, that God was in all things that live—everything and everyone, including the people in the shanties, including the people in the tower.

For weeks after, my body itself was changed. I had no desire for meat, for sex, for any of the old impulses. I was living a different reality.

If that sacred spark is truly in everyone, then why do our systems elevate some and crush others? Why do we build towers for the few and shanties for the many? The problem couldn't be with the divine spark itself. The problem had to lie in the things that blind us to this truth.

Looking through these new eyes, I saw two great illusions that create this blindness. The first is the great external illusion, the belief that systems of power, control, and performative authority are legitimate and necessary. This is the illusion that tells us some people are worth more than others. I call this the Hollow Senex.

The second is the great internal illusion, the belief that we are fundamentally separate from our own soul, and therefore separate from the soul of the world. This is the illusion that fuels our judgment in isolation. I call this the Cancer of Eros.

These two illusions, working together, are the source of the shanties outside the hotel window.

That numinous fire from the tiger burned within me. It was a truth I knew, but could not yet speak; a long and quiet alchemical process that needed time to work in the darkness. Then, a more recent initiatory dream acted as the final catalyst. And what had been slowly gestating for years was suddenly born. In a flood, these stories, these parables about kings and mirrors, foxes and scribes, banks and circuses, the merged whole. And I understood their purpose. They are not meant to be answers. They are mirrors. 

Mirrors do not preach or command. They simply reflect. They reveal the patterns of the great illusion, the Maya, so that we can begin to see it for what it is. This work, then, is not a frontal assault on the systems of the world. It is a quiet alchemical process. It is about dissolving the illusions within ourselves with the profound understanding that an external system is only as powerful as the internal illusions we agree to believe. When we change our own seeing, the world we see begins to change with it. And this podcast from this day forward is my commitment to hold up those mirrors.

The format will be simple. Each episode, I will share one of these parables, a single short story. We will look into it together. We will unpack its symbols, explore its meaning, and I will leave you with a question to carry, a question to ask the one in your own mirror.

My hope is not to give you a new belief system that would just be creating another Hollow Senex. The hope is to provide a tool, a mirror that might help you find your own way to reclaim your own inner authority, to learn to govern yourself.

I'm recording this in the quiet hours of Sunday morning here in Wisconsin.

The world outside is mostly asleep, and it feels like the right time for this work to begin.

This is an invitation to join me on a different kind of path. It's a journey not into knowing more, but perhaps into unknowing better. To find the courage to sit with the difficult questions and the compassion to listen for the answers that come from within. Thank you for being here at the threshold.