Spirituality for Gamers
Posted by Christopher in Gamer Talk, Spiritual Musings on January 15, 2010
This is a story of how two completely separate threads of introspection wove themselves into one. I love when seemingly disparate things come together. It feels very organic.
I’ve been gaming semi-regularly for 26 years now. I started with DnD then quickly moved to 1st edition Advanced DnD and from there, it was a dash of Gamma World and Villains and Vigilantes, some 3rd edition Champions when I went to university then Marvel Super Heroes and GURPs and a big stint of White Wolf and 2nd edition DnD followed by Marvel SAGA, Mutants and Masterminds, 4th edition DnD and now by the looks of things, back to Champions (6th edition Hero System).
I had noticed a trend early on. I preferred my characters to be tough. I always figured out which stat meant toughness and pushed in that direction. However, of course, I always loved magick so in DnD, my characters were often variations on the fighter/wizard theme. My superhero characters were bricks (invulnerable, super-strong, etc.) In my introspective nature, I reflected on how perhaps it was some kind of inner need of my own to be able to have plenty of options while able to weather any storm.
This all changed with City of Heroes. I’d played MMOs before. I’d been playing MUDs for years and Everquest was my graduation into MMOs. However, City of Heroes was unique. Superhero games were already rare and very few were role-playing games, being either a flavour of the month console action game or the equally unique strategy game, Freedom Force. City of Heroes merged three needs into one – superheroes, role-playing and 24/7 service. I didn’t need to wait for my friends if I wanted to play. It also allowed two other crucial elements – customization and multiple characters.
My imagination exploded and after five years, I had close to 60 characters, only two of whom were at the max level. It wasn’t the game I cared about, it was the characters. City of Heroes developed a symbiotic relationship with my gaming group. My friend, Gaetan, started an online superhero campaign using Mutants and Masterminds and characters that I made in City of Heroes would get full treatment in Mutants and Masterminds and vice versa.
When you create that many characters, seeing patterns becomes easy. Many of my characters were very different from one another and yet, on paper, were very similar. I started seeing archetypal trends, the warrior, the maker, the wizard, the shapeshifter, etc. It seemed that my mind wasn’t just trying to express a need for durability, there were specific archetypes it was trying to identify with. Through my gaming habits, I was getting a glance at my own subconscious.
Let’s cut to the other thread. I have had a long-running problem with magick. Namely, I suck. I started studying Western traditions – Golden Dawn and Thelema but I couldn’t stand the pomp and ceremony of it. If I wanted to watch a self-important dude in a dress mumbling Latin, I’d become a Catholic. I moved on to Chaos Magick and most recently, the Law of Attraction. I’ve yet to have success with either. In fact, my successes were found when I was screwing around with Shamanism and Pagan Kitchen Magic, strangely enough… though I suppose losing my job after visualizing leaving my job counts as a point in the Law of Attraction column.
I think I’ve come to understand why Chaos Magick and LoA haven’t been terribly good for me. Chaos Magick works by creating a symbol and then imprinting that symbol during an emotional spike, though other extreme moments can be used such as physical exhaustion, sneezing, orgasm, etc. The Law of Attraction relies on a sustained emotional level, call it faith, expectation, gratitude, etc. My particular brand of depression mutes my emotions. I have three main emotions, apathy, anxiety and laughter. So, needless to say, on an emotional scale of 1-10, chaos magick requires willed spiking up to an 8 or 9 while law of attraction calls for holding at a 6 or 7 and I’m usually down at a 1 or 2. I’m going to need to defeat my depression before those two become viable paths for me.
On the plus side, it occurred to me that a sociopath is completely detached from their emotions so at least I’m not there. I’m kind of halfway between a sociopath and a healthy person – too caring to kill, too apathetic to care. Weird thought…
Right, where was I? So, I was thinking about gods… as I do. Many cultures have their cthulhu-esque gods. The Greeks gave us the classic name, titans. Titans are gods of such magnitude that humanity is largely irrelevant by comparison and we humans don’t like being irrelevant so we often cast titans as evil. In a previous post, I examined the idea of titans as the incredible forces of the universe envisioned by primitive cultures. Uranus and Gaia seemed a perfect metaphor for a planet enveloped by the cold vastness of space but the planet (Gaia) over time (Chronos) was able to produce an atmosphere (Zeus), oceans (Poseidon) and fertile earth (Hades). It was this point that the planet (Gaia) became fertile (Rhea) and produced life.
So, we have universal gods. Helios represents the immense ball of nuclear fire that could quite casually cook the earth. Uranus is the vastness of space, seemingly endless in size. Hyperion and Theia are the light that races across the universe, nearly omnipresent.
From them, we have the cultural gods, the civilized gods. Apollo doesn’t represent a ball of fire capable of consuming a solar system. He’s the day, a pleasant sunny day when you go to the beach, drink some wine and play the guitar to impress your girlfriend. His sister Artemis isn’t the Moon, a massive ball of rock, large enough to influence oceans. She’s quiet, stalking prey and blessing women. Civilized gods represent forces that we as humans can embrace and enjoy. They’re cultural forces, shaped by the people who tell their stories. Zeus is a philanderer, eternally fertile, but he’s a Greek god and Greece is a beautiful place. Another sky god, Thor, is a great warrior, almost entirely of a different attitude than Zeus but Thor was worshiped by a warrior people who lived in a land of harsh winters. The Aesir lack much of the frivolity of the Olympians.
One step further down from the civilized gods are the heroes and demigods. It occurs to me that the tradition of heroic storytelling is alive and thriving. We have different heroes, Superman, Luke Skywalker but the tradition is the same. We tell stories about imaginary characters of incredible resolve and epic destiny. Superman is simply a modern retelling of Hercules. Luke Skywalker is Percival, though Lucas may have orchestrated that similarlity.
In fact, as the years have gone by, Superman has been promoted. He can fly and strike his foes with rays of heat from his eyes, he’s impervious and battles beings of cosmic significance. He even wears blue, red and yellow. He’s a sky god now. His close, almost brotherly, friend is a man who wears black, skulks around and though he’s extremely wealthy, lives in a cave. The third member of the trinity is a royal warrior from an isolated island at sea. DC’s trinity seem to be playing the roles of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon.
I guess I’m rambling so I’ll cut to the chase. It seems to me, Jung and Frazer would agree, that gods and heroes are expressions of deep psychic structures, or archetypes. We keep telling stories, keep creating new heroes and the ones that resonate the strongest survive. Sherlock Holmes is a household name even after 120 years and Hercules, well, he’s not leaving popular culture any time soon. However, these heroes were all created by individuals; their stories told first by one person before they set fire to a cultural psyche.
So, while I’m not telling stories, it seems that I am building psychic structures around archetypes and some of them are older than I thought. One example, the Azure Fenian. He was my first character in City of Heroes. I wanted to make a brick (Super-strong, invulnerable) so I made a Tanker (the super tough role) and I chose Invulnerability but when it came to choosing an offensive power set, I took Energy Melee simply because it had a power that did extreme damage whereas Super Strength didn’t. I had fun and played him to level 50. When my gaming group started playing Mutants and Masterminds, I made a few other characters but one day, I decided to try cross-planting the Azure Fenian over to MnM. He was a simple character (tough, energy fists, flight: done) but I wound up really fleshing him out into one of my most complex but satisfying builds.
His concept was that he was a roughneck (low class labourer) who found a magic gem that opened his mind to a Celtic titan, Mathonwy. The titan raised him instantly to divine consciousness and using a mix of Samadhi, siddhis and Celtic myth, I explained satisfactorily (to myself at least) that the Azure Fenian could do anything he truly believed he could… options + toughness = fulfilling my basic RPG character design need.
Recently, Gaetan and I started looking at 6th edition Hero System so I went looking for old character sheets and what I found surprised me. Prodigy, aka Neil Williams, a scientist who somehow got himself mixed up with the Celtic Otherworld and came back with an understanding of Kung Fu and Chaos Magick (I don’t get it either).
What was equally strange was that I already had a character named Prodigy who was my first character for the MnM campaign. Prodigy aka Neil MacKenzie, is a mutant supergenius who creates a mind-expanding process and opens himself to cosmic consciousness (kind of a bargain basement homage to Dr. Manhattan). So, as it turned out, two characters whom I had thought were original creations were in fact, the offspring of a character I had created over 15 years ago and long since forgotten.
Upon further inspection, many of my characters were saints or demigods or cosmic beings, the lowest rung of the next stage beyond humanity. Now, this is a common theme in mythology. Many Greek heroes were the bastard children of Zeus but these days we have origins ranging from aliens to demigods to guys with really crazy utility belts. My characters had themes like light, artificing, magick, and shapeshifting but with an over-arching commonality of transcendence. These guys are my gods, my personal pantheon, excavated from my subconscious.
Now, what do I do with them? Portraying them in a MMO or at the gaming table is entertaining but it doesn’t further my exploration of them any more than watching Kevin Sorbo on the TV deepens one’s understanding of Herakles. I think I need to develop a path that incorporates godforms and pathworkings using my personal pantheon. Using masks that I’ve created personally, I need to coax these archetypes into a personal relationship and perhaps that is my path to enlightenment.
Addendum: Just as an additional thought, so that the magically-inclined readers don’t think I’m nuts… and by magically-inclined, I mean Mitch because I think only 3 people have ever read this blog, aside from myself. In Hermeticism, Gods can be analyzed by their placement on the Tree of Life. Now, if I compare my two examples, Prodigy is a scientist, a supergenius with heightened senses who catapults himself to cosmic consciousness. He can do almost anything but he has to do the math first. On the other hand, the Azure Fenian is an enlightened roughneck. He has no idea what he’s doing. All he knows is that if he believes hard enough, inspiration will strike and he’ll achieve miracles.
On paper, as characters, they’re almost the same. One has good mental stats and a variable power pool with a cosmic theme. The other has good physical stats and a variable power pool with a magical theme. However, on the Tree of Life, Prodigy is a very Hod-like character. He’s all about the logic – miracles can happen, if you do the math. He fits Hod or perhaps Path 26, Ayin. Hmm, interesting. 26’s King and Queen colours are Indigo and Black. Prodigy’s colours are purple and black. The Fenian is a Netzach-ian figure. He’s the warrior-poet figure. Nun seems the obvious choice but I’m not certain of that.
In any case, this will be the work of the days ahead; examine my characters, feel out their sincerity, map them then learn how to pathwork and see if they’ll come out to play. 
The tripartite Self
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on January 15, 2010
In my exploration of my depression… feels funny typing that, it sort of feels like I’m owning the illness and in doing so, comfortably sliding into a role of the pitiable victim. What comes next? Going on Disability, gaining 100 lbs and making a career out of watching soap operas. No thanks, deep-throating a loaded gun is a much better option than that. Hmm, which upon reflection demonstrates the insidiousness of depression. I’m not suicidal but apparently, unlike most people, I do have defined parameters beyond which suicide is a valid and preferred option.
Interesting tangent but anyway, it’s occurred to me that I seem to have three voices. My therapist advised me to view my thoughts in two different voices, a mature voice and an immature voice. If I want to go to the gym, get in shape, find a nice woman to settle down with and get a career going, that’s the mature voice. The immature voice says, it’s too cold to go to the gym, I’m repulsive to women anyway and I’m unemployable.
The immature voice has a great deal of power, a surprising amount, to be honest. There have been many days when I have gotten showered, shaved, clothed and ready to head out the door, whether it be a grocery run or a trip to the gym but suddenly, I feel paralyzed. Not a literal paralysis, it’s as though my motivation just evaporates and my mind goes numb. My mature voice starts yelling for me to get up but I don’t, not in the sense that I’m ignoring the voice but more in the sense that the signal gets intercepted before it reaches my muscles. As though the immature side of me has crossed its arms like a little child and refuses to cooperate with the frustrated mature side and my body just sits in a holding pattern until either side dominates.
It becomes a question of negotiation, of recognizing that there’s a child in my mind. I can’t command it, I can’t force it, at best I can negotiate. I’ve started with meditation. Yes, I was meditating daily then I fell off the wagon for a couple months. Now, I’m back. I’m using Israel Regardie’s method. I lie on the floor, pillow under my head and listen to some binaural tones on my iTouch (MindWave app, recently started using MindWave 2) while I relax my body, scan for tight spots and just let the thoughts come and go as they please without clinging to any.
This form of meditation is especially welcoming because my weight has drifted back up to 200 lbs… disappointing but parking my ass on a couch for 8 months had to have some negative consequences. 195 seems to be my health threshold. Once I reached that, the sensations of bloatedness, acid reflux and back pain returned. Corpse pose is excruciating for the first 5-10 minutes since my back is so tight but focusing on tight muscles helps me from getting attached to any thought trains and after 30 minutes, I’m very pleasantly relaxed so I’m glad that I negotiated that routine… mind you, my therapist wanted me to commit to twice a day and I haven’t managed that yet but it’s a step in the right direction.
On to the third voice… this one is hard to pin down really and I hesitate to define it at all because I have a hunch but it’s a hunch that seems equally wishful thinking and heretical. The third voice speaks once in a blue moon and there’s a special quality about it that makes me stop. It’s me but it’s not me. It doesn’t dominate my actions like the mature or immature voices, it merely makes a comment then disappears for a few days or weeks. It also has such an aura of certainty and confidence that whatever it says feels like gospel. Sometimes I’ll be worried about my course of action, worried about money and my current state of unemployment and suddenly, the voice will simply say “everything will be fine” and my anxiety is washed away. Lately, I’ve started taking faith from the third voice and I’m not sure it’s a wise choice.
What is the third voice? Well, as I said, I have a hunch but that’s all it is, a hunch. I suspect that the third voice is my higher Self or in Hermetic lingo, my Holy Guardian Angel. Now, it could be wishful thinking, maybe this voice is just a splinter of that destructive self that wants me to spend the rest of my life in a rut or maybe I just want everything to be fine because my life seems to be on very shaky ground right now. It’s also somewhat heretical because Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is a grueling process for magicians. For me to say, “oh, there he is!” seems somewhat silly and flippant although I truly haven’t achieved Knowledge and Conversation. Simply that once in a blue moon, a thought will come to me with such sincerity, certainty and clarity that it feels like I can bank on it and I mean Know with a capital K. This has been happening for the past year or so since I started exploring the Law of Attraction and I Knew that I’d be leaving my job of 9 years.
In any case, the idea of three voices is curious to me because trinities are such an important part of the human psyche. Many religions have trinities at their summit. Greek mythology has three kings. Lord Zeus rules the sky, Poseidon rules the seas and Hades rules the Underworld. Hindu myth has its highest triumvirate – Shiva the destroyer, Vishnu the preserver and Brahma the creator. Christian myth has God the father, Christ the son and the Holy Ghost. Celtic myth has two triple goddesses, Morrigan is in fact The Morrigan who is comprised of Nemhain, Macha and Badb. The name of Ireland, Eire, originates from the triple goddess Eriu, Fodla and Banba. Thelemic myth has the triumvirate of Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Freudian psychology separated the psyche into Id, Ego and Superego. The Tree of Life, an important symbol in magick, is composed of three trinities flowing into a tenth and final sephiroth.
Trinities are an important archetype and I find it fascinating that with some introspection, I can start to sense the three Selves that comprise my thoughts. Finding balance is the next goal, getting my immature Self to cooperate more and my higher Self to participate more and perhaps getting my mature Self to not be so forceful and frustrated.
Hmm, a final thought to close this post. While I identify my with mature Self, it seems that perhaps I am none of them. I am the spark of pure Being that sits in the center of this triangle, this misshapen triangle. The three Selves may just be masks formed by the psyche for the True Self to wear… or perhaps the Selves are styles or formats. Perhaps my True Self has many masks it can wear at any given moment. Chris the web developer is different than Chris the philosopher but they’re both facets of the Mature Self. Maybe the three Selves are multifaceted.
I’ve mentioned this before but it brings to mind a revelation I had about Hod a few years ago. The God name of Hod is Elohim Tseva’oth, which means Lord of Hosts. Hod is also the sephiroth that represents intellectualism. So, Lord of Hosts could imply the countless symbols that humanity has created over the millenia. God as the master of all sciences and forms of study.
Microcosmically, it means to me that the hosts are the countless personalities that we all have. All these personalities seek expression and to further their own agendas. The playful Self wants to play, the horny Self wants to fuck, the compassionate Self wants to join a charity and so on. Many of us aren’t in control of these personalities. For example, a holiday gathering where some people are letting their Family Self sit on the throne of Hod, while others have given their Social Self the talking stick and a few might be wearing their Drunk Self.
The mind is a multifaceted thing. I think that part of mastering Hod is having the awareness to know which Selves are lurking in the crowd, which one is currently at the wheel and the will to give control to the Self that is appropriate for the moment.
Accretions
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on December 11, 2009
I’m tempted to name this post A Vision of the Miraculous or A Return to Animism.
It’s fascinating how things can lie under the surface, mix with other lurking things then spring up in new and exciting forms. I finished reading Nanofuture several weeks ago. Incredible intro to nanotechnology, if that sort of thing floats your boat. What was particularly interesting was that nanotechnologists are learning their field from biotechnology. By seeing how the body constructs amino acids, proteins, hormones, etc., nanotech engineers see how they can manipulate things on a molecular level. It struck me at the time that the body… in fact, any organism, is a naturally occurring masterpiece of nanotechnology. Just let that sink in for a few minutes. Your body may be 5′ – 6′ in height, 100-200 lbs in weight but it’s composed of trillions of moving parts all working on a molecular level… and so is your cat, your dog, your plants, the tree in the backyard. From that point of view, life leaves me speechless.
I don’t know how I got on this train but I was thinking about clones and teleportation. People love teleportation but, to me, there’s a dark side. Should we ever develop the technology, how would you know that anyone other than yourself has been teleported? To teleport, a person would dematerialize at their location and rematerialize at their destination. They’re essentially destroyed at point A and recreated at point B but would the person at point B be them or a copy of them, a clone? Would anyone know the “real” person is dead? From the perspective of the observer, a person disappeared at point A and reappeared at point B. They’re acting normally so everything’s fine, right? So, we come to the critical question: what am I? If I could be destroyed at point A, cloned at point B and no one would be the wiser because my personality and memories would be duplicated in exacting detail, what is the part that got lost?
Consciousness, soul, spirit, “that which looks out from behind my eyes”… this gets us into the morass of religious belief – Heaven, Hell, deities of various shapes, sizes and demeanor. So, let’s say I’m teleported and end up in Heaven (not likely but play along). What ends up in Heaven? Is it ‘me’ with my love of comics and busty redheads? But ‘me’ is a personality, a construct of the brain. I realized that if you strip away the body and the mind, you have pure Being, Isness and that is I.
I am aware and I can either will or observe – action and reception, positive and negative, yang and yin. How I choose to act is based upon beliefs, my personality, things that are stored in the brain. I am an actor and my personality is a mask. If I switched bodies, say with a woman, would I still be ‘me’? Maybe for a little while but the estrogen coursing through my female brain would give me different information about the world and so, I would find myself playing the new role… it’s a funny thought.
In any case, the Hindu concept of the universe as a drama came to mind. In this worldview, everything is Shiva. Shiva is an actor extraordinaire, not only can he play infinite roles but he can play them so well that he forgets that he is acting. I am Shiva, you are Shiva, my desk is Shiva, my TV is Shiva, your computer is Shiva and so on. All consciousness is one and it’s the masks we wear that make us who we think we are.
Today, sitting on the bus, exploring the sensation of being at one with all things, I found myself in an Animistic state of mind. Consciousness is everything. I am God but so is the bus and the road and the sky. I am playing at being me. The bus is playing at being a bus… but why am ‘I’ separate from the bus or at least experience a separation? Again, it’s the masks. I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union… as Uncle Al once said.
Matter is an accretion. It gathers, encrusted on spirits, who are themselves simply roles that God plays in his one-man show. My coffee table is matter shaped into a form reminiscent of the platonic ideal of a table… this isn’t just a man-made process. Matter shapes itself quite naturally into stars, planets, trees, people… where are these blueprints? A tree is a natural expression of the concept of Tree, a concept held in the mind of God or Mother Nature, if you prefer… even Mother Nature is herself a spirit. By processes we barely understand, matter coalesced 93 million miles from a star mimicking the concept of Planet, the matter specialized even further, with help from the star, to take the form of Living Planet.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I can continue to articulate my state of mind but I think I’m slipping into an animistic universe. Quantum mechanics tells us that all matter is one. My gut (and a few religions) tells me that all consciousness is one. In between the two extremes are spirits of infinite number and variety.
I’m one step closer to seeing the universe in a grain of sand.
The Search for Self
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on November 30, 2009
I haven’t posted in a while and much has happened since. I’ve been to two workshops: The Strong Interest Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The results were… unsurprising. The SII test compares your interests with those in various occupations so it’s not really a personality analysis so much as a comparison of my answers to those of men who enjoy their work. My highest themes were Artistic, Investigative and Realistic. My top five interest areas are Mechanics, Visual Arts, Religion, Science and Counseling. Finally, I could list my top ten occupations but I’ll just go with the top five: Photographer, Architect, Artist, Carpenter and Musician. Yes, I should have been a pornographer… and back in Grade 10 when they asked me to choose a specialty in Drafting, I should have chosen Architectural instead of Mechanical but I thought machines were cooler than houses… teenagers…
Interestingly enough, my results in the Myers-Briggs were consistent. I came out as an INFP again. I say interesting because these tests always seem so obvious that I feel like I can skew the results however I please and so, I expect a degree of variation based on how much I care about skewing the results. However, it would appear that I am somewhat consistent. As an INFP, I am one of the quiet, bleeding heart types. However, on the plus side, comparing the two tests, four careers show up in both: Artist, Architect, Musician and Photographer. So, I have a little bit of direction, career-wise.
One thing does bother me though and I’ll take this up with my various counselors this week. INFPs are emotionally reserved but good listeners. This description has gotten under my skin because I have been reading Undoing Depression by Richard O’Connor.
Here’s a little backstory. My doctor had prescribed Cipralex, an anti-depressant, but aside from a little grogginess, it was having no effect. So, deciding that it was likely a psychological issue rather than a chemical one, he referred me to a psychotherapist whom I have seen three times since my last blog post. She lent me the book for me to read and offer my insights when next we meet. In any case, my particular flavour of depression isn’t the jumping off a bridge type, it’s the I couldn’t really care less about anything type. Compared to most people, my emotions are muted. I’m not sad or miserable, I’m simply hollow and I’ve likely been this way since I was a child, which leads me back to the description of INFPs – emotionally reserved. Is my depression skewing the results of the test? Am I truly emotionally reserved or am I emotionally shut down and so producing the outward appearance of being reserved?
Despite my doubts, the results were unsurprising. I suspected that photography would come up. It’s artistic and yet technical enough to satisfy my left brain. Artist is in the list as well as musician. Writer is sort of there. It’s in the list for INFP-suited career. Technical writer is in the #7 spot on the SII results though I find technical writing mind-numbingly boring. None of these career choices are shockers although that begs the question, why haven’t I pursued those paths from the start? Yeah, I’ve got nothing. Hopefully, my therapist will sell me a clue.
Strangely, perhaps the drugs are working because I’ve had an optimistic realization… or maybe just a bout of magical thinking. For decades, I’ve avoided artistic endeavour, I’ve worked in crappy jobs assuming I never knew what I was doing (often openly joking about it), my spiritual pursuits are a long-term study in failure. However, I wonder, in a fatalistic slant, if everything is going according to plan.
My money’s on Dysthymia as my illness of choice and the thing with Dysthymia is that since it is a chronic illness, sufferers often come to believe that its symptoms are just regular parts of their personality so they rarely get diagnosed. Likewise, I never really identified low self-esteem; I just thought I was an underachiever. I never identified low energy; I just thought I was laid-back. I’ve always had insomnia. I remember as young as 15, I would take scalding hot baths before bed because it’d help me pass out. There were many nights when I had to cling to consciousness to get me from the tub to the bed. In hindsight, I think I was regularly pushing myself to the edge of heat stroke. My friends have always known me to be indecisive and I’ve gone months at a time either eating only one meal a day or entirely forgetting to eat until I had a blood sugar crash. There’s 5 of the 6 symptoms of Dysthymia that I have had for over 20 years now.
And I’m certain that I would have continued living just like this. Staying in bad jobs until I got fired and staying in bad relationships until I got dumped, quietly hoping for death but lacking the courage (or despair) to invoke it myself. It’s like a grand conjunction. I hit 39 and start contemplating my mortality and my failure to pursue my dreams. I buy a condo, started losing weight and getting in shape. I ‘got serious’ about my spirituality, meditating twice a day and performing visualization exercises. I then lost my job of 9 years and it all comes crashing down. However, like a phoenix, rebirth can come from death. Without a job or a social life to distract me, the elephant in the room became visible. Perhaps these past months have been a trial that has at last revealed the antagonist of my life story.
It will be a difficult battle, that much is obvious. I don’t really know what’s me and what’s the depression. I don’t really know who I am or who I want to be. I don’t know how this all started. Aside from a few hellish memories from age 5, my memories don’t start until age 10 so, although I hate the cliche, I’ve repressed most of my childhood. However, it’s a battle most people spend their whole lives avoiding. No one is perfect. Everyone has a skewed vision of the world and very, very few people get to examine their Selves. It looks and feels like a disaster but I finally get to face my inner demon, conveniently at a time when I have resolved myself to change my life for the better.
Though he recanted later due to a lack of faith in the psychological community, Israel Regardie often said that a magician should seek psychotherapy before delving into magick to root out the true cause of their pursuit, to shine the light of consciousness on those demons that play us like puppets, demons such as Pride, Greed, Avarice and the other four sneaky bastards. I’ve joked that Sloth was my vice of choice but now, I get to see just how right I was and perhaps I’ll get the chance to get him off my back and wring his triple-chinned neck…
… and that’s a happy thought
Dark Night of the Soul
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on October 4, 2009
I admit the title may be somewhat over-dramatized.
Last week, my dad and step-mother came to visit. They were trying a local driving vacation, up to Gatineau then down through Kingston, sampling touristy things and B&Bs along the way. They dropped by to take me out to dinner as they passed through Ottawa. As I updated them on my situation – no money, no significant other, no social life, no job and spending roughly 15 hours a day parked in front of a big screen TV, my step-mother was shocked. She’s worried that I’ve stopped participating in life so she told me to go see my doctor. Ordinarily, I’d ignore such a request but she is a palliative care nurse and has been one her whole life so I’ll take it as free medical advice.
The next day I told my mother about the diagnosis and she didn’t seem surprised. Of course, she was diagnosed by bipolar disorder a few years ago so I guess the odds were in favour of one of her kids developing it. I don’t know about the manic part though. I do have periods of anxiety, irritability and insomnia so perhaps I am bipolar or maybe I’m just as moody as everyone else but I let someone stamp a label on my forehead.
Hindsight being 20/20, the signs have been there. As a kid, I recall being outgoing. In my early teens, I was in a school talent show, singing ABBA tunes on stage. I robbed a local lumber supply shop blind so I could build a tree village in a local forest. In my late teens, I took up bartending but spent almost as much time on the dance floor as I did behind the bar. I took pride in labeling myself as an ambivert, as comfortable alone with a book as I was in a crowd. Something changed and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more withdrawn. Aside from keeping my cats healthy and entertained, my life seems largely a waste. Canadian society certainly has no need for another mediocre web developer with a penchant for porn, comics and computer games. Makes me chuckle; 6 billion people on this planet and at least half are just a waste of resources.
So… on that happy note, my doctor has prescribed me Cipralex. No effects so far, side or primary, but it’s only day 2. I’ve also been prescribed daily exercise and advised to cut my screen time to 4 hours a day. Yes, that’s TV + computer = 4 hours. Seems marginally impossible but I do have a large collection of books that have gone unread since I stopped commuting to work.
Segue-ing into literature. I’ve been looking at ways to make my life more bearable and one of the chief means to make great money is to find your passion. I won’t link, every productivity and personal achievement site discusses it. So, what’s my passion? Excellent question and one I’ll answer as soon as I have one. I may be going the wrong direction but I’ve looked at my skills and come up with a potential answer. People in the past have commented that they enjoy my writing and no, not just my mother. I also realized that I have this storehouse of character ideas in my mind from decades of roleplaying. So, why not put the two together and see what happens?
I’ve tried my hand at writing in the past (find them under the Fiction category) but really just when a particular scene comes to mind or when I want to give flavour to a character, beyond a sheet of paper covered in little boxes and numbers. However, what if I really went for it? What if I put my focus into becoming an author?
I feel a little late to the game but then I was recently reading an article in which Dave Duncan tells an interviewer that he didn’t start writing until he was in his 50’s. I was rooting around in my hard drives and found a manuscript I had for a gaming book. It was a world book I was writing for D&D 3rd edition describing a world I was designing. I’d already written over 200 pages; 222 (129 thousand words) according to MS Word so I know I can write a large piece. Truthfully, a book on setting rules doesn’t require a lot of creativity. A piece of narrative fiction, however, may prove much more challenging.
I don’t know if I have what it takes to be an author. To me, the market looks flooded and I don’t feel educated enough to write intelligently. However, I love fiction. It’s an art but unlike fine art, words are the pigments and the result has movement. Everyone starts as a novice, even guys like Ray Bradbury and Alan Moore were once clumsy amateurs. I already have three potential stories clamoring for my attention but I’ll start small, I think. Short stories are roughly 7,000 words so I’ll start there and I’ll post them here. I don’t know if WordPress will allow a 7,000 word post but I chunk them down if it won’t.
Having said all of that, I recognize that of all the deadly sins, Sloth is mine… wish it was Lust but I guess we don’t get to choose our weaknesses. It may be months before I ever post a story but like I said, I already have three stories. Seems like once I made the declaration to become an author, they just bubbled up on their own. Perhaps I have creative constipation and all it’ll take is a good squeeze to get things moving. Graphic, I know… sorry.
So, there’s the update: depressed, possibly manic-depressive but mental illness is often a side effect (or is it a cause or a trait) of an artistic mind. 12 steps; I am an artist. Now, I need to do something with that admission.
The Spiritual Life
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on September 10, 2009
I think I’ve turned a new direction onto the path of a true spiritual life. I was considering the pentagram from the perspective of the Psychological Model… first, for those not in the know, I should describe the “Psychological Model”.
I’ve been aware of the principle for decades but never gave it much thought until Phil Hine defined it for me in his book Condensed Chaos. He describes four models of Magick: Spirit, Energy, Psychological and Cybernetic. All four models describe the effects of magick though none fit the bill perfectly.
The Spirit Model is the oldest. In this model, the universe is alive and teeming with life. Everything has a spirit, whether it’s a person, a rock, a grove, even planets have hierarchies of spirits. We affect the world by dealing with the spirits and we can even affect ourselves by evoking our inner demons or praying to our inner angel, be it a higher self, guardian angel, etc. This model is still alive and well in the form of religion, as we pray to God (aka Allah, Jehovah), Jesus or the various archangels and dead saints.
The Energy Model is also very old and it is worldwide though it gained its popularity in the East. As the name suggests, this model says that everything is energy and by manipulating energy, we can manipulate the world or our selves. Here, we replace gods, demons and spirits with chi, prana, chakras and meridian points. In the West, we used terms like awen, mana, orgone but the idea was essentially the same. Breath is life and life is energy. This model is still quite healthy through popular practices such as yoga, acupuncture, tai chi and various other martial arts.
The Psychological Model is relatively new. Again, the name says it all. This model tells us that our relationship to the Universe can be understood and altered through our own minds. Gods are archetypes, demons are neuroses and the effects of ’spellcasting’ can be invoked through inviting synchronicity or by adjusting our perceptual filters and personal beliefs. NLP and Timothy Leary’s 8 Circuit Model are great tools for working in this framework.
I’m not quite sure I get the Cybernetic Model but I’ll explain as best I can. Phil Hine describes it as the view that the Universe is inherently random and neurological storms in the brain can result in macroscopic effects in the Universe, a la the Butterfly Effect. To me, this is indicative of the Law of Attraction movement in which the mind is connected to the Universe on a quantum level and focused will can cause effects on a probabilistic level.
In any case, my own exploration of the Law of Attraction led me to the principle of resistance, which led me to an examination of my own limiting beliefs and patterns. Drifting as I do, my mind turned to the Psychological Model to confront these issues, though, as I said in my last post, Ray Sherwin has an interesting Spirit Model approach in The Book of Results. With this approach, I used the limiting belief “No matter how much I make, I’m always broke” to produce a sigil and a name. Now, I can disassociate from the belief and treat it as a demon. But that was the topic of the last post.
What struck me here is that the pentagram gave a view of the spiritual life from the perspective of the Psychological Model. Let me throw a pentagram up on the screen here (thank you, Wikipedia).
Pentagram in Green
In Magick, the points of the pentagram refer to the classic elements plus Spirit. There is an additional meaning to this. The Upright Pentagram implies that Spirit is ascendant. It sits above the classic elements, which are the building blocks of the material world and so, spirit rules over matter. The Inverse Pentagram implies that matter rules spirit. There’s a political statement here as well, of course. Christians claim the pentagram, whether Upright or Inverse, is a Satanic image while Satanists, often being savvy to magick, use the Inverse Pentagram to demonstrate their devotion to the materialistic life over spirituality.
Comparison of Upright vs Inverse
To continue, I relate aspects of Self and the 8 circuit model to the elements, using Robert Anton Wilson’s labels for the circuits.
Fire: Passion and the Socio-sexual circuit, which governs morality, society, sexuality, family
Air: Psyche and the Time-binding Semantic circuit, which governs intelligence, belief, perception
Water: Emotions and the Anal Territorial circuit, which governs status, dominance
Earth: Body and the Oral Bio-survival circuit, which governs safety, security, sexuality
What I saw was that resistance occurs on all of these levels. Not surprisingly, our personality is defined by how these circuits are imprinted. By addressing each circuit, resistance can be reduced, perhaps cleared entirely. More importantly, I realized the position of Spirit. Spirit is the element of Being. It is the most subtle element but also the most crucial. In terms of the aspect of the Self, Spirit is the real You, that which looks out from behind your eyes.
The thought occurred to me that I, like almost everyone else, have been living a “Satanic” life. I have been allowing my various resistances dictate my choices. In doing so, I allow my lower aspects rule over my highest aspect; matter over spirit. In fact, almost everyone does.
For example, fear is often the result of a negative imprint on the first circuit. I don’t mean rational fear. Certainly, fear of large animals, heavy machinery or angry, armed people is healthy. I’m talking about irrational fear, which isn’t always as extreme as a phobia. The fear of trying a new business opportunity. The fear of attending a social event. The fear of learning something new. Instead of moving ahead into something new, fear tells us to retreat back to the safe and familiar.
Authority comes in many flavours, like a parent, a mentor or an older sibling. If I go to medical school because my mother wanted a doctor in the family, even though my passion is music, I’ve given in to authority. If I refuse to talk to a potential client because they seem far too busy and important then I am submitting to a perception of having lower status, and thus unworthiness.
Beliefs can be insidious, largely because they seem to make sense and we’re attuned to situations that will support them. For the longest time, I’ve always believed that I didn’t know what I was doing. At work, I would always defer to a colleague and if asked outright something that I would know, I’d find myself blurting out that I didn’t remember. (“Don’t ask me! I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday!”). The funny part is that the ego needs to be correct. By feigning ignorance, it was like a preemptive strike. If I cast doubt on my own responses then no one could come back and tell me I was wrong because I’d already told them that I probably was. So, I was right… about being wrong. Most of our beliefs make about as much sense as that.
Finally, passion and morality. The socio-sexual circuit is about taking our place in society as contributing adults. We contribute by furthering the aims of society and by having families, producing children and raising them to be productive members of society. Resistance here involves morality; what’s expected of us. If we have too much money, we’re greedy. If we don’t have a family, we’re immature and irresponsible. Our passion is here too. Somewhere, deep in our core, we know what we’re meant to do. Unfortunately, it’s deeper than many of us can see and it’s clouded by morality. Maybe I love to teach but can I feed my family on a teacher’s wage… maybe I’ll just become an accountant instead. Can a woman be a construction worker? Can a man be a nurse?
When I give in to fear, submit to authority without question, accept a belief that has no basis in reality, or allow someone else determine for me what is right or wrong, I am allowing the lower elements rule over me, over spirit. It is when I choose for myself, when I act to eliminate my resistances that I walk a spiritual path. When Spirit has the final say over morality, belief, emotion and survival, that is when Spirit rules over Matter.
How will I do that? A great question. The first step, tongue-in-cheek, is to know that there is a problem. From there, I intend to catalogue these little demons as they crop up. Gather intel, as it were. How do each of these limitations manifest? What are their triggers? Important questions but the key is to know that I am the final arbiter of all of my actions. If I give in to fear, it is because I made that choice. I am not the fear but I allowed fear to seduce me into following its advice and by doing that, I made it stronger. Spirit is King, recognition of that fact is the first step onto the spiritual path.
Resistance
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on September 2, 2009
Many LoA (Law of Attraction) experts talk about resistance, which is the instinctual counter-force to self-improvement. For example, if I look at myself in the mirror and repeat the affirmation, “I am vibrantly healthy and slim”, some part of my mind will reply, “That’s a crock!”. The voice might be loud, coming from my conscious mind or utterly undetectable, originating from my subconscious but in either case, it counters the affirmation, reducing its effect, potentially negating it entirely.
Resistance is a difficult topic because it’s insidious. It can manifest as simple cynicism but unfortunately, it can also manifest as caution (“If I lose weight, my spouse won’t love me”), practicality (“I don’t have the time or the energy to go to the gym”), reason (“I’ve always been heavy. It’s just my body type”) or even as a belief picked up in childhood (” Skinny people are unhealthy”). Resistance can undermine your efforts to change your life and do so with such stealth and effectiveness that you’re defeated before you even realize there was a conflict.
I got lucky last year. I was standing in the kitchen trying to find some lunch. The pantry was close to vacant and my fridge wasn’t much better off. I then realized that I had to buy some groceries but my bank account was almost empty and I nose-dived into anxiety and self-deprecation. Why am I so broke? Why do I never have any money? etc., etc. I was beating myself down while I whipped together a peanut butter and jam sandwich. I grabbed the sandwich and turned to walk into the living room and as I did, I laughed at myself. Here I was, in a financial panic, walking into the living room of my three bedroom condo to sit on a leather sofa and watch a 52″ TV. It was patently absurd.
I realized then that I had had this conversation before. The year before that, when I first moved into the condo, I manufactured a cavalcade of financial panic via the hydro company. Before I moved, I had applied for an account because I was living in an apartment building so hydro was factored into the rent. When I did move in, though, the hydro company hadn’t yet connected the account I had applied for with the address so there were two accounts, my account and the account for “Resident” of my new address. Without paying attention, I sent my payments to the Resident account. When the hydro company started asking for payment, I assumed they had lost my money. Later that year, I decided to be financially wise and made up a budget but since the hydro bill changes from one season to the next, I left that bill off the budget. How can you plan for a bill that always changes, was my rationale. When winter came and the bill skyrocketed to $600 (thank you, electric baseboard heaters), I couldn’t pay the bill.
So, here I am again, laid off and the severance package is drying up. I’m making the shift to EI (Employment Insurance) but I’m stumbling. Things aren’t lining up well so I have a period of zero income looming. I went to my financial adviser. He’s handling my pension plan set up by my previous employer and through some new hardship clause, I can withdraw money from the plan. I realize that I’m doing it again, unconsciously orchestrating scenarios of financial panic.
The good news is that now that my credit cards are maxed, my line of credit is tapped out and my pension plan is wrung dry, this little demon will be appeased and leave me alone until I start making money again, providing history repeats itself. Even better news is that it has gone to such absurd lengths to appease itself that I can see it now… and the first step is admitting you have a problem.
So, time for the plan of attack. First, I need to know my enemy. It acts through stupidity or extravagance. By stupidity, I mean that I neglect obvious things like hydro bills or interest charges and by extravagance, I mean those moments of financial impulse and nonchalance. Often the two will combine. For example, I have $500 worth of credit on my card and I see something like a rare book that costs $350. First comes “Why not? You only live once!” then comes “Overlimit fee?! Ah, I see. I forgot the exchange rate + shipping + interest charges.”
I also know that there’s a difference between wealth and income. Every job I have had has paid more than the last. This isn’t the story of a janitor with a doctorate. Despite my financial issues, I always manage to keep climbing the ladder and I often get jobs I’m not qualified to have. The issue is that no matter how much I earn (whether it’s welfare or corporate), I inevitably find myself eating peanut butter and jam and counting my change.
I’ve narrowed it down to a core statement: No matter how much I make, I’m always broke. I use the word ‘broke’ instead of ‘poor’ because as I said, I can be comfortably middle class. It’s the cash on hand that evaporates, not the assets or lifestyle.
I think I’m going to try a combination of EFT and sigilization. For the EFT, I may log into my bank account online and work myself into a anxious state – churn it up so I can filter it out, so to speak. As for the sigilization, I’m not entirely sure. In The Book of Results, Ray Sherwin discusses demons of habit so I’ll be looking into his process for eliminating negative traits.
Once I start seeing some success with this pesky little bastard, it’ll be time to move on to others. Playing dumb is another one I can see out of the corner of my eye and it feels like it’s really knotted itself into my brainpan so that’ll take some work. Beyond that, it’s a question of “Know Thyself”. The resistance is there but since it’s commonly rooted in the subconscious, it requires awareness and observation to detect, not to mention the determination to not let these things go unchallenged.
Resistance ties into my next post as well. It’s a core aspect of living a spiritual life.
Artistry
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on August 17, 2009
An addendum to A Few Metaphors:
I just watched the latest episode of Hung on HBO. Tanya is frustrated with her poet’s block. At first, I found myself wondering how an artist could make a living. In hindsight, I recall that she has a secretarial job. I felt sympathetic for her but also envious. I’ve always wanted to be an artist and yet, never had the courage… but how much courage does it take? Just do it, as the folks in the Nike marketing department might say, just do it!
A thought occurred to me as the episode came to a close and Tanya began writing again. I am an artist. Sorcery is an art and all this time, I’ve been learning its basics. This isn’t really news to me. One of the first things I learned as an impressionable teen was Aleister Crowley’s famous line:
Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change in conformity with Will.
But perhaps I’ve disregarded the words over the years. Yes, it’s a science because the aim is to have reliable, repeatable results. It’s an art because there’s drama and interpretation but now, I see that it is an art just as much as painting.
It has two types of canvas, my world or my subconscious. The what of my life and the how of my life… and vice versa. It has a full suite of colours to use, from ecstasy to rage to vacancy. I can use the bold abstract strokes of Chaos Magick, the structured reverent lines of Ceremonial Magick or the gentle pastels of the Law of Attraction.
Wow… I’ll need to think about this some more
World as Soulmate
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on August 3, 2009
There’s an Irish myth that’s been buzzing around in the back of my mind lately. The Ascension of Niall of the Nine Hostages is the story of Niall, son of Eochaid Mugmedón, High King of Ireland. He is the youngest of five sons, and even worse, born to the king’s second wife. As a test of their worthiness, the sons are sent out to hunt. They wander far from home and when the hunt is successful, they decide to camp. Fergus is sent out to find water and he does, a well guarded by a hideous old woman. She demands a kiss for the right to draw water from the well and Fergus refuses. When he returns empty-handed, Ailill and Brian go out in search of water, find the same well and just as their brother did, refuse the old hag. Fiachra goes next, again reaching the well found by his brothers. He relents and gives the hag a peck on the cheek, which does not satisfy the woman and he returns defeated. Finally, Niall heads out. Unlike his brothers, when Niall reaches the well, he gives the hag a passionate kiss and the hag is transformed into a goddess, the Lady Sovereignty. By her command, Niall succeeds his father as High King of Ireland.
On the surface, the moral could be said, don’t judge a book by its cover. There are also thoughts on the identification of land as feminine and the traditions of many ancient cultures in which the king was said to be married to the land. However, a number of associations has led me to a different conclusion.
The first association comes from the Book of the Law, in which Crowley refers to kings and slaves. Despite the obvious political connotations, the reference is to two different types of people. The first type pursue their passions and do not give in to circumstance. They take their life by the reins and ride. They rule their world as opposed to the second group who are ruled. Slaves are content with the status quo. Give them a nice TV, three squares, a family and they’re happy to toil their lives away. When circumstance strikes, they accept their fate and continue on.
The second is from Alan Watts. In the Philosophy of Nature, he coins the term organism-environment by which he meant that no creature evolves in isolation. The Arctic has as much to do with the polar bear as the bear itself. You cannot describe the polar bear without describing the Arctic as well. Creatures, including humans, are not organisms in an environment but organism/environments. The separateness is an illusion.
Finally, the tetragrammaton, YHVH, as described in Ceremonial Magick, refers to Yod (Supernal Father, the paternal force of Godhood), Heh (Supernal Mother, the maternal force of Godhood), Vau (the Son) and Heh (the Queen). Just as the Supernal Father and Supernal Mother are wed, enlightenment comes when the Son and the Queen are wed. In some interpretations, the Son is the higher Self and the Queen is the ego so when a person is able to surrender completely to their higher Self, the mystical wedding occurs.
But I thought what if this could be interpreted another way? The missing piece, as pointed out by Alan Watts, is the world. What if the Son is the person, the active, dynamic half and the Queen is their world, the passive half? By world, I mean a person’s life. We all live on the same planet but we all live our own lives in our own worlds. Our worlds may overlap to a small degree as with friends and co-workers or almost completely as with families but each person has his or her own thoughts, perceptions, interpretations, etc. so we can never truly share worlds.
My world is as much unique to me as is my body and my mind. If I achieve enough awareness to recognize that I am not separate from my world then I am open to the union of my Self and World. The Myth of Niall of the Nine Hostages tells us this. No matter the condition of our world, be it ugly or filthy or happy or numb, if we embrace it whole-heartedly and passionately then we achieve spiritual sovereignty and become Kings. In other words, take responsibility for everything in your life, no matter how small or how bad, especially the direction your life is taking. Even quantum mechanics tells us that the role of the observer is an illusion. We all have a role to play in every event in our lives.
I’m tempted to take this idea one step further with an idea of the spouse as avatar of the World. However, my thoughts aren’t quite sorted out on this.
My Theory of Consciousness
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on July 21, 2009
I feel at one with the Universe. I stretched out my mind and embraced my world. I have a new understanding of how the Universe works.
Consciousness seems to me now to act similarly to the spacetime continuum. Physics tells us that spacetime could be described as the fabric of the Universe. Objects within that fabric are simply vortices of high activity. Spacetime consists of 1-dimensional strings and how these strings vibrate determines how we perceive them, more specifically, what kind of particle manifests as a by-product of their activity. Some manifest as electrons, some as quarks, and quarks can merge to form more complex particles such as protons or neutrons. These complex particles form even more complex objects called atoms, which combine into molecules and so forth. The end result curves back upon itself as objects of great mass such as planets and stars can warp spacetime itself.
It occurred to me that there appears to be a similar relationship between consciousness and awareness. Everything has consciousness but to varying degrees, which can be determined by its degree of awareness. Rocks and minerals, as far as we can tell, are entirely unaware. Plants don’t appear conscious though they have enough awareness to twist or lean towards the Sun and dig deep towards water and nutrients. Animals vary greatly depending upon the species though their consciousness and awareness are great enough manifest intelligence. A cat, for example, is conscious enough to display intelligence and personality. It is aware of its environment, moods in other nearby animals and social connections. It also has enough awareness to establish its own social bonds.
For me, it’s the human being that marks a quantum leap, so to speak. Just as gas packed densely enough will ignite into a star, the human mind consists of a core of consciousness dense enough to ignite into self-awareness. Though, somehow, even this idea feels incorrect. Perhaps the “ignition point” for self-awareness is lower, achieved even by higher animals, while the heights that humans can achieve, we deny ourselves in the name of science and religion.
It strikes me as an interesting parallel to the physical Universe. Gas clouds, moons, planets, stars, all objects of ever-increasing mass having their effect on the Universal fabric with transformational points represented by stars and black holes. I find a comforting connection to the quote by Aleister Crowley, Every man and every woman is a star. Just like a star, we irradiate everything with our individual light.
All things are of the Universal consciousness just as we are all of the same spacetime and as stars curve spacetime by their nature as dense clusters of activity so are people dense clusters of awareness. The path to Enlightenment is simply the journey to a complete recognition of this idea. Beyond this lies the various methods of exercising our atrophied awareness. Psychism is the means to enhancing our awareness, beginning with intuition and leading to breaking down the limits of space (clairsentience), time (pre/postcognition) and mind (telepathy). Magick is the study of becoming an active and effective consciousness. Mysticism provides the means to eliminate the barriers, intellectual, emotional and physical, to full and complete knowledge and awareness.
It’s still a model that I have to digest. My ideas of consciousness have changed over time and I’m sure this one will change as I keep up my own mystical activity.