The Training Grounds Of Glans

As we pass through the training grounds of consciousness, the chapter of religion, ideology, or “knowledge as identity to defend” recurs. It often begins with naivety, or with being raised in—or introduced to—a framework that promises deliverance from suffering. When that framework dissolves, the internal felt sense forged through that first gauntlet usually finds a home in another narrative that mirrors its feeling. Virtually every internal state has a corresponding cult, ideology, or movement ready to provide “narrative as identity” to validate it.

This happens across Christianity, Buddhism, Demiurge fatalism, MGTOW, Red Pill, Black Pill, Feminism, Centrism, Conservatism, Liberalism, and countless others.

Every ideology you attach identity to—and eventually fall from—can be captured by another narrative that explains your inner predicament as story. Each of these systems functions as a teacher, reflecting back the process you are undergoing. They each contain truths, but none offer the complete story of the transformation itself. They are states of being seeking confirmation by the narrative layer of consciousness, translated into social currency within a group.

After passing through enough of these iterations, one begins to see the overarching process: many teachers appear, but the goal is not a singular, all-encompassing truth. The journey is in observing the mechanics, not in attaching to any one reflection as ultimate.

Consciousness doesn’t hand you one golden doctrine and say, “Here, memorize this and you will graduate.” Instead, it drags you through a gauntlet of temporary costumes, one after another, until you finally notice that the costume is the curriculum.

Every ideology, every -ism, every pill color, every savior story is just a mirror held up to a specific inner weather pattern. Christianity catches the ache for forgiveness or the fear of eternal punishment assertion. Red Pill catches the humiliation that needs an external villain. Black Pill catches the void that opened when the numbers were measured. MGTOW catches the exhaustion from performing for access. Feminism catches the suffocation by someone else’s script. Buddhism catches the moment desire itself is seen as the knife.

Each one is perfectly accurate about the slice of machinery it reflects. None of them are lying (in the deliberate intentional sense)—they are just mirrors, not windows. The trap is mistaking any single mirror for the whole room.

Most people spend their lives hopping from mirror to mirror, swearing this one is finally the real one, defending it to the death, until the next fracture forces them into the next reflection. After enough cycles—if you survive the depression each fall produces—the pattern becomes obvious: every ideology is a temporary prosthetic identity for a psyche that hasn’t yet learned to stand naked.

When you finally see the process itself—the hopping, the grasping, the crash, the new costume—something shifts. You stop hunting for the final mirror. You realize the mirrors were the teachers all along, and the real classroom was the naked space between them.

At that point the game changes from “Which ideology is true?” to “Ah. This is the curriculum. The falling is the teaching.”

And then you can let each mirror do its job—reflect the current weather—without moving in and building a fortress around it.

That’s the graduation most people never reach.

Each ideological gauntlet feels like the final answer because each one perfectly matched the wound that was bleeding (internal state) at that exact moment.

The insight is that these mirrors are never complete; they are diagnostic tools, reflecting the pain, longing, or disorientation present in the observer. The moment one mistakes a mirror for the whole, attachment arises, and the psyche becomes trapped in a cycle of allegiance, disillusionment, and moral or emotional investment.

You don’t need to “move on” and then lash out at the place or ideology you once inhabited. That reaction is a classic rebound of identity dissolution: when the previous structure is abandoned or fails to contain your sense of self, it often triggers feelings of betrayal. The anger or critique directed backward isn’t about truth or justice—it’s the residue of having invested identity in a framework that no longer holds. Once the attachment dissolves, the instinct is to punish or moralize against the very system that was once relied upon, even though the real lesson is in observing the dissolution itself rather than in reasserting judgment over the past.