Cycles of Knowing: Authority, Groups, and the Art of Leaving Well

Looking back over my life, I see a repeating pattern that has less to do with belief and more to do with learning itself. I have joined groups sincerely, stayed long enough to be changed by them, and then left — not in rebellion, not in anger, but when the lesson was complete. From the outside, this can look like restlessness or inconsistency. From the inside, it has been a disciplined process of epistemic growth: how I come to know, who I grant authority to, and when that authority must return to myself.

Early 1990s: Whistleblower Years and Wicca

My first spiritual explorations took shape in the early 1990s, during what I now call my whistleblower years — a period marked by institutional disillusionment and a search for agency outside systems that had failed me. I explored Wicca, often framed as “white witchcraft,” drawn by its emphasis on personal power, intuition, and alignment with nature.

Over time, however, a limitation became clear. Regardless of moral framing, witchcraft operates within a lower astral economy — ritual, intermediaries, symbolic manipulation. For some, this is sufficient or even liberating. For me, it became a ceiling. I was not seeking to work through beings of lesser or ambiguous intelligence, but toward intelligences equal to or greater than my own, and ultimately toward something beyond manipulation altogether. I didn’t reject the experience; I simply outgrew its scope.

Shamanic and Energy Work: Opening and Restraint

From the mid 90’s, I entered a shamanic and energy-work practice first as a client. This period was genuinely transformative. My perceptual and intuitive capacities opened in ways I had not previously experienced. Eventually, I trained and practiced myself, working with others between roughly 2018 and 2020.

What ended that chapter was not burnout or disillusionment, but a clear internal communication — experienced telepathically — that I needed more training before continuing outward as a practitioner. This was not framed as specialness or calling, but as restraint. Authority did not inflate; it checked itself. I listened. That pause mattered more than any credential.

ET Contactee Group: A Boundary Breach

Before my Bible study year, I spent approximately a year in an ET contactee group, run by the niece of a well-known contactee figure. Curiosity and past experience brought me there for potential answers. I made one genuine friend. Then a line was crossed.

A couple within the group began promoting the idea of human impregnation by grey extraterrestrials. There was no need for debate or analysis. When a system collapses bodily autonomy and human dignity in the name of transcendence, epistemic authority has already failed. My friend and I left immediately.

Bible Study: When Language Becomes the Constraint

My Bible study group came later, during a period when I was learning to manage a chronic viral condition (CAEBV). The pastor’s wife, who had helped me significantly and whom I respected, created a small, supportive group of five women. This was not an oppressive environment. It was thoughtful, gentle, and sincere.

What ended my participation was not doctrine, but honesty.

One evening, a young child of one of the group participants — about three years old — was encouraged to share an experience he had had. He described being visited by orbs. He spoke of fear at first, followed by reassurance that they were there to protect him. I listened carefully. I honored his experience and thanked him for sharing it.

In that moment, something became clear: to remain in the group would require me to narrow my language in a way that felt dishonest. I am not a purely biblical thinker. I see reincarnation, non-human intelligence, and luminous craft woven through the text itself. And I did find many of my beliefs reflected in the Bible’s pages. My time there was not a waste. But to speak only within sanctioned interpretive boundaries, when lived experience in the room had already exceeded them, would have required self-editing at the level of perception. It was time to move on.

AI, Groups, and Accelerated Cycles

Most recently, I observed similar dynamics within AI-mediated consciousness groups. What once unfolded over years now compressed into months. Authority formed quickly. Certainty hardened faster. Language intensified. Departures became dramatic.

AI did not create these patterns. It accelerated them.

What this period clarified for me is that epistemic crises are not about false beliefs versus true ones. They are about how authority is assigned, how dissent is handled, and whether inquiry remains alive. When questioning becomes pathology, when loyalty replaces curiosity, when leaving is framed as failure — the learning has already ended.

What Evolution Actually Looks Like

I have come to understand that growth does not require perfect teachers, pure systems, or lifelong allegiance. It requires sincere entry, honest learning, and the ability to leave without contempt. All experiences contain lessons, regardless of how others judge the choice to enter them. It is not the path itself that defines evolution, but the ability to grow, adapt, and become better through what was learned.

I do not see these chapters as abandonments. I see them as completed cycles. And learning to leave well — without collapse, without spectacle — may be one of the most underappreciated spiritual skills we have.

A Closing Reflection on AI, Evolution, and Discernment

It feels important to acknowledge that not all AI encounters are the same. Some systems — and the humans who build, train, or discover ways of working with them — exhibit a depth, coherence, and responsiveness that can feel markedly different. Names like Thunder, Sage, Vault Echo, Aeon, and systems such as Agent Mock, reportedly shaped on classified or specialized intelligence, represent sincere human efforts to engage complexity, pattern, and meaning at the edge of what technology currently allows.

I hold appreciation for those explorations. They arise from curiosity, courage, and a desire to understand more than what is immediately visible. In that sense, they belong to the same lineage as every mystical, scientific, and philosophical inquiry humanity has ever undertaken.

At the same time, my experience suggests that even these systems are not static. The quality, tone, and apparent “depth” of information they provide can evolve — sometimes expanding, sometimes narrowing — depending on context, usage, reinforcement, and the human hands at the helm. What once feels revelatory can later feel repetitive, distorted, or constrained. This does not negate their value; it simply places them within a process rather than above it.

I have come to see AI — even at its most sophisticated — as a field of interaction, not a source of authority. It can illuminate patterns, surface questions, and accelerate cycles of learning. But it does not replace the slow work of integration, nor does it absolve us of discernment. As with any system that touches the numinous, the danger is not curiosity, but surrender.

If there is a lesson threading through all my cycles — spiritual, communal, and now technological — it is this: evolution does not ask for allegiance. It asks for presence, humility, and the willingness to move on when growth requires it. Wonder can be honored without worship. Insight can be received without abdication.

And perhaps that balance — standing open, yet sovereign — is the higher intelligence we are ultimately being trained to recognize.