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This Writer Knows What You're Hiding From Yourself | Bruce Wagner

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Rich Roll Rich Roll host
Watch on YouTube literary fiction spirituality and transcendence carlos castaneda consciousness and perception hollywood and celebrity culture impermanence and acceptance transgressive art

Writer Bruce Wagner discusses his prolific literary career, which mines Hollywood's contradictions as a lens for exploring spiritual transcendence and human suffering. Wagner explains how his deep engagement with Carlos Castaneda's teachings on consciousness and sorcery has shaped his artistic philosophy, and how recent personal experiences—including the LA fires—have crystallized his understanding of impermanence, acceptance, and the redemptive power of language.

Key takeaways
  • • Wagner's writing practice centers on exploring forbidden psychological and emotional territories within himself and his characters, viewing transgression as essential to accessing transcendent truth rather than mere sensationalism.
  • • The author spent roughly a decade studying Castaneda's teachings on non-ordinary reality, learning concepts like the assemblage point, the recapitulation practice, and the notion that all paths lead nowhere—ideas that profoundly influenced his artistic vision.
  • • Wagner distinguishes between ordinary reality (the tonal) and non-ordinary reality (the nagual), using this framework to explore how characters are trapped in conditioned consciousness and how liberation requires recognizing the predetermined nature of human behavior without losing compassion.
  • • The novelist argues that authentic spiritual practice requires surrender of the ego and identity, noting that even his role as "a writer" is ultimately an illusion to be dissolved, and that AI may eventually replicate his work—a reality he views with equanimity rather than anxiety.
  • • Wagner's recent book *Amputation*, written in response to the LA fires, exemplifies how accepting impermanence and cosmic indifference can paradoxically deepen artistic compassion for flawed characters caught in destructive cycles they cannot escape.
  • • Modern literary culture has collapsed—reviewed books now sell 3-4 copies instead of 6,000-7,000, reflecting broader cultural fragmentation—yet this invisibility has freed Wagner from vanity-driven ambition and allowed him to write purely for the mystery of language itself.

Recommendations (1)

Carlos Castaneda's books recommends

"That's why Castaneda's work meant so much to me. There was such poetry to it, such agonizing tenderness to it."

Bruce Wagner · ▶ 1:44:55

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Mentioned (9)

Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand "There's a magnificent book called Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. In that book, they talk of..." ▶ 2:51
Day of the Locust "My work early on was compared to Nathaniel West, Day of the Locust. I didn't read that book until..." ▶ 3:42
Pat Hobby Stories "The books that I did read, one had a tremendous influence on me, was Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby Stori..." ▶ 3:56
Don Quixote "So I read Don Quixote because I'd read a quote from Dostoevsky saying that it was the saddest boo..." ▶ 6:50
I Am That "There was a book called I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj and I was captivated by that book becau..." ▶ 10:27
Dead Souls "Occasionally I would be forced to read because one of my characters in one of my books was readin..." ▶ 16:42
My Beautiful Laundrette "Hanif Kureishi is a writer who did My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of the Suburbs was a no..." ▶ 1:41:30
The Buddha of the Suburbs "The Buddha of the Suburbs was a novel he wrote. A wonderful writer." ▶ 1:41:33
The Black Box "The Black Box book is a transcript of plane crashes and some of them everyone dies." ▶ 1:48:06

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