When I read esoteric texts — texts where the content is not immediately understandable, for instance philosophy, sociology, theology, hermeticism — and work hard to understand the content I am reading, the primary goal of the effort is not to understand the content. That is a secondary goal.

The primary goal is to experiment with new subjectivities. With esoteric content I must make changes to my own subjectivity in order to comprehend what is being conveyed. To understand means to change myself into a subject capable of comprehending the material.

But these changes to myself extend beyond the content, to my overall experience of reality. I find myself noticing different things and finding them significant in new ways. My aesthetic tastes change and see beauty and repugnance in different phenomena.

Each change makes experiential tradeoffs. Some things get sharper, clearer and more important. Other things become fuzzier, cloudier and lose significance. Existence as a whole takes on new tones and flavors. I’ve read things that make reality seem hopeless and not worth the trouble. I’ve read other things that make reality seem deeply tragic, essentially painful but infinitely valuable.

Most of all, the overall effect of all this subjective change has highlighted realities that never change. These alone seem true to me.

And what most people around me regard as “the truth” seems an artifact of some truly unfortunate subjective states they never chose, but to which they are loyal, not out of love but lack of alternatives.