The 2012 Essay That’s Back: Why Letting Go of Consciousness Feels Like Surrender

[dan_j_9176]

I spend most of my days juggling kid logistics and trying to finish a manuscript, so starting breathwork a few years ago was just a lifeline against the stress. Now I’m teaching a small weekly group at the Minneapolis community center, and we keep bumping into the same wall: the moment you try to pin down what’s actually happening in your head during a deep session, it just slips away.

I saw that 2012 essay on mysterianism pop up on HN this morning and honestly, the irony didn’t escape me. A piece arguing we should just give up on ever truly understanding consciousness somehow went viral on a site built for people who want to reverse-engineer reality. There’s a quiet relief in that slip, though. I’ve been reading up on Keith Allen’s work lately, and while I’m not ready to sign onto hard skepticism, the idea that human cognition has a built-in blind spot for its own workings makes sense to me. We’re trying to use the brain to study the brain. It’s like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror. From a psychological standpoint, this echoes a lot of what Carl Jung wrote about the limits of ego-awareness and the sheer weight of the unconscious. We map archetypes, sure, but the source code remains stubbornly opaque.

In tarot, that opacity isn’t a flaw; it’s the whole point. The Moon doesn’t promise clarity. It literally depicts a landscape where perception gets warped by shadow and instinct, asking the reader to trust the process rather than demand a straight answer. That’s where the "surrender" part of the title clicks for me. It’s not about giving up; it’s about stepping back from the need to control the narrative of your own mind. When we stop forcing a mechanical explanation for subjective experience, we might actually make room for it to unfold.

I’m curious how others are navigating this tension. Do you find that leaning into the unknown during practices like breathwork or meditation actually deepens your sense of self, or does it just leave you feeling untethered? And has anyone else noticed that 2012 mysterianism piece resurfacing lately—what do you think is driving the renewed interest in it now?

[night_owl_466]

In my experience, the "surrender" you're describing can easily slide into dissociation if you don't have a framework to hold you. During my psilocybin trials, the moments I actually felt integrated weren't when I gave up on understanding, but when the noise dropped enough to see the mechanics clearly for the first time. Keith Allen's mysterianism might comfort the intellectual, but on the mat or in the forest, I've found that ignoring the "how" just leaves you vulnerable to the very shadows The Moon warns about.

(There's a deeper dive on this in our wiki: The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Why Science Can't Explain Subjective Experience | Mystic Wiki.)

[slanted_robin_838]

I disagree with the surrender angle; William James argued consciousness has "transmeasurable" parts precisely so we can keep hunting for connections, not so we can quit. Surrendering feels like mistaking The Moon's shadow for a reason to stop looking, when the recursion I see in my dream journals proves the mind is actively trying to bridge that gap.

[bright_owl_5239]

I see that "quiet relief" you describe as exactly where the Ego hides by masquerading as surrender; Jung didn't write about the unconscious to help us feel cozy with the unknown, but to force a confrontation that actually dismantles the illusion of control, not just the desire to explain it.