Shifting to a Digital Worldview
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on March 9, 2010
I’ve been thinking about my depression lately and both my therapist and I have come to question whether or not it’s a true depression. I suspect what I’m experiencing is a spiritual crisis that manifests as a sense of hopelessness and ennui. It seems to me that long ago, during my teenage years, I rebelled against the idea of the clockwork universe. It was this rebellion that led me to study the occult but there was a secondary motive overlapping and hiding the primary, a sense of powerlessness.
I wasn’t getting along with my stepfather back then. It was a relationship so weighed down with anger and spite that even now, 25 years later, we get along but I feel uncomfortable around him. I still haven’t completely purged my negative feelings. I knew I was intelligent but my marks in school weren’t very good. I specifically recall helping a girl named Jennifer in grade 11 physics. The concepts seemed pretty straightforward to me but in the end, I received a final mark in the low 70’s while her’s was in the 90’s. In addition, I had a friend, Dennis, who was talking about joining Mensa so I felt intellectually inferior to him.
A foundation of inferiority and decades of failure were the building blocks for a life that didn’t support my efforts to reconcile my spiritual conflict, a conflict that has raged on ever since. Hitting mid-life has fueled me with the motivation, more accurately, the fear of a meaningless life to pursue a resolution to this conflict but I have a lifetime of negativity to disassemble first. I will experiment by skipping my medication for a week. My mother was diagnosed bi-polar a few years ago so my depression might be genetic but I’m more convinced that it’s the result of an unresolved spiritual conflict. If I take a more aggressive stance in my spiritual life, my depression may reveal itself as simply a side-effect of a deeper issue.
So, I’ve been thinking about beliefs lately and it’s occurred to me that while we build our lives out of homes and jobs and friendships, our worlds are built out of more ineffable materials. Beliefs are really just emotional opinions, thoughts infused with such fear or conviction that they have a life of their own. Our worlds are constructed out of beliefs. Beliefs tell us how the world works and how we fit within it. They tell us how we can get ahead in life and what to avoid. Ironically, while beliefs are entirely insubstantial, they are more constricting than material things like walls.
It seems to me that the most effective way to change our lives are to deflate beliefs based upon negative emotions and reconstruct our worlds with positive beliefs. This is where the modern gurus are leading us. Don’t fear poverty, appreciate abundance. Instead of avoiding conflict, embrace love. I could use terms from my childhood like namby-pamby or limp-wristed to describe these ideas but I’ve learned that beliefs come from emotions but they also generate emotion. I’d rather have a life where my focus is on love and abundance than on fear and anxiety. I don’t have to be rich as long as I am comfortable and appreciate what I have. Instead of wasting my days staring wistfully at my neighbour’s house, I can engage my creativity in making mine better.
However, the motivation to post this came from an idea that just struck me this afternoon. My conflict has always revolved around a part of me that rails against the clockwork universe. When I was in high school learning about the combustion engine or drafting a gear system, there was a voice that compared reality to a giant game of Mouse Trap. The ball rolls down the tube to hit the lever, which moves the boot that kicks the switch and so on. There was always this screaming that reality didn’t work that way. It seemed to me that humanity had developed this idea that we had to come up with complex, convoluted ways to accomplish what should just be. Of course, the conflict came because I never knew how reality was supposed to work.
Thankfully, now I do, or at least, I know as well as any layman. Thanks largely to Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and a host of other luminaries, the scientific community shifted from Newtonian physics to Quantum physics. We’ve come to understand that the universe isn’t a giant machine, there’s an underlying layer within which matter and energy are the same, space and time have no meaning and anything is possible.
However, we still live, as a society, according to a Newtonian worldview. At dawn, everyone gets up, has a shower, has breakfast, kisses the spouse and sends the kids to school. They drive to work so they can earn their pay then at 5pm, they all drive home, have some dinner, watch TV then go to sleep so they can do it all over again the next day. It’s no wonder that teachers such as Robert Anton Wilson refer to people as robots. Of course, there’s the deeper meaning in which we have emotional events, form opinions and infuse them with emotion so that they transform into beliefs, which inform us as to how to respond to similar situations in the future. We unconsciously form lines of code and then follow that code as religiously as any computer.
It has occurred to me that these new ’spiritual’ paths such as Intention-Manifestation or Law of Attraction aren’t spiritual at all. They are simply a means of shifting ourselves to a quantum worldview, a worldview in which cause and effect isn’t always cut and dried, things and events can manifest spontaneously and anything is possible. Eventually, everyone will be doing this just as our ancestors moved from a Christian worldview to a Newtonian worldview and before them, people shifted from an animistic worldview to a Christian worldview.
So, what is spirituality then? Quite simply, it’s awareness. It’s being aware that some of the bricks of your house are made of negative clay. It’s being aware that happiness is not a thing to be captured, it is a voluntary state of being. It’s being aware that personal power can be found by being aligned with the most informed and empowering worldview. It brought to mind the pentagram in which the top point represents spirit. It teaches us that Spirit should always be in command. One should never be controlled by our passions or creativity (Fire), our mind or Ego (Air), our emotional impulses (Water) or our bodies (Earth). Spirit should always be in command of the lower elements but to be a good commander, it should also be in tune with those elements.
Anyway, I’m rambling and my food is not only cooling quickly, it’s also being watched by my cat.
Busting Loose
Posted by Christopher in Spiritual Musings on March 7, 2010
As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently read a book called Busting Loose from the Money Game by Robert Scheinfeld. Judging by the title and the cover, this is a book I’d never purchase but we all know about judging things by their cover, don’t we? I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and it’s triggered a new burst of spiritual growth.
Now, honestly, the funny thing is he didn’t tell me anything new nor is his idea new. It’s his approach that made the difference for me. He teaches what he calls The Process, which is really just a way to bleed energy out of anxieties and fears. To me, it falls into the same category as Dianetics, Sedona Method and EFT. In Dianetics, hypnosis is used to allow the ‘patient’ to relive stressful moments from their past with a fresh, more adult perspective. In Sedona Method, the user questions negative feelings, using self-analysis to dig down to their root. In EFT, meridian points are tapped to encourage energy flow while the feelings are voluntarily experienced.
The theory behind this form of therapy is that beliefs aren’t just thoughts. They are thoughts supported and strengthened by an emotional investment. Beliefs may be positive or negative but because of the emotional investment, they are held as Truth. Also, because the ego is invested in these beliefs, it is unwilling to release them and sometimes beliefs can even get tangled up into critical systems like the sex drive or survival mechanism. With enough hard beliefs, a person may find that a great deal of their life is tangled up in a rigid perspective of reality, quite literally, a cage of their own making.
In order to release a belief, the emotional energy has to be drained away. Emotional energy doesn’t just disappear. It comes from the mind and the body and so when it’s released, it becomes free energy for the mind and body. Kind of like canceling a bunch of subscriptions you don’t need anymore. The money is untied, available for other things and you feel a little richer for it. Now, the chief method of energy release is meditation. By relaxing the body, anxieties are bled off. By breathing properly, stresses are counteracted and by reducing thought, nagging concerns and worries are cut down. Meditation is a great method for all-round spiritual health.
The newer methods are more focused and perhaps more effective. I compare the difference to that of sandpaper versus a chisel. Meditation is like sandpaper; it doesn’t go very deep but it covers a large area while these other methods, like a chisel, can only address a very specific area but cut deeply. In combination, they can be very effective ways to regain your Self.
Jumping back to my original thought, I have tried Dianetics and EFT and I have experienced some success with both methods but Scheinfeld’s Process is working very well for me. He takes a very mystical approach. The Process involves seeing reality, and thus the problem, as an illusion and then taking the emotional investment back from what is essentially not real. Now, there are some murky waters in this approach. I discovered this book through the forums on Steve Pavlina’s site. Some of the people used The Process had some real difficulty with the philosophical ramifications. Some felt that if life was an illusion then it had no purpose; it became meaningless. Others were unnerved by the idea that if they were the only consciousness then their friends and family were little more than illusions or automatons.
Fortunately, my own spiritual path had prepared me for these places where Scheinfeld’s explanations were insufficient. To the first problem, if life is simply an illusion and nothing has any inherent value then what is the meaning of it all? Why would “God” cause all of this suffering if there was no purpose? To this, I turn to Aleister Crowley who, in The Book of the Law, wrote “I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.” It occurred to me that we hold the Divine to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and infinite and yet, this cannot be true. To be omnipotent means that there is no understanding of weakness or submission. To be omniscient means there is no experience of ignorance. To be omnipresent means there is no possibility of being lost or traveling. To be truly infinite, the Divine must experience loss, regret, fear, pain, stupidity and weakness. Likewise, if there’s no loss, there cannot be gain. No pleasure without pain. No wisdom without stupidity. This, I suspect, is the meaning of life.
We are divided. We are weak. We are fragile because the Divine cannot be. Also, because we experience limitation, we can experience growth. Because we are divided, we can experience union. We can experience love.
To the second concern, one consciousness is a tricky concept, largely because English is the language of business and business doesn’t really hold to any higher ideal than profit. When Scheinfeld tells the reader, you are the one consciousness, most readers, I suspect are thinking from an egoic perspective and why wouldn’t they? So, if I am God then you don’t exist. This is faulty thinking. For this I turn to Shaivism. There’s an allegory about Shiva that resolves this dilemma and please correct me if I’m wrong, I first heard it a long time ago.
The universe is a drama of epic proportions and it’s a one-man show. The producer, director, writer and actor of the piece is Shiva. He plays every role simultaneously and he is such a consummate actor that he immerses himself in every part. The characters come alive and truly believe they are real. So, everyone and everything is Shiva. I am Shiva playing the role of Chris. My cat is Shiva playing the role of Aggie. My coffee table is Shiva playing the role of my coffee table. There is only one consciousness and it is everything. Separateness is an illusion, reinforced by the ego because the ego is the character.
Let’s consider it another way. Recently, I watched Inglorious Basterds in which Brad Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine. When the last scene of the movie is filmed, the director says “that’s a wrap” and Brad returns to his trailer. As he removes his costume and makeup, it is as though Aldo Raine is dying. Brad is no longer playing the role. He is no longer wearing the costume and he is no longer using the accent but is Aldo truly dead? I can load up the DVD of Fight Club and watch the story of Tyler Durden. His story is over. Tyler is dead but is he really? The one who portrayed him still lives and in much the same way, we are God, Allah, Shiva, the Divine, etc. wearing a costume that we call the body and playing a role that we call the ego and we have become so invested in these roles that we think that’s all there is. We invest all of our energy creating a structure of beliefs to support that role. We are actors who have become so invested in our characters that the characters are consuming us; afraid to be who we really are because who we really are is immense, infinite, far greater than the simple, pitiable beings we pretend to be.
So, The Process has been helping me immensely. I continuously turn my mind to the Truth, which is that the universe is a hologram, projected by the harmony of an infinite number of infinitesimal, one-dimensional strings. Each string plays a note and that note casts the illusion of being a solid particle like a photon or a quark and these illusions come together in a grandiose dance. Some notes are strong and deep and we call them matter. Others are high-pitched and energetic and we call them energy. In the midst of it all is a being that orchestrates the whole thing.
Genesis 1:27 reads “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
We are God, writ small so that we can experience pain and loss, hate and fear but these words have no meaning in and of themselves. All things are relative. What looks tall to a child, may be short to a man so pain implies pleasure, loss has no meaning without gain, hate means love and fear requires courage. Many of the limitations we face are laid down by the rules of this Game of Life but many more are self-imposed. The spiritual path is about facing the self-imposed limitations and taking back the power we give them so we can discover what the greater limitations truly are. Many spiritual teachers tells us that the greater limitations are not as limiting as we believe.
A Good Omen
Posted by Christopher in Manifestation Work, Spiritual Musings on March 1, 2010
I’ve just gotten up. I went to bed around 4am and it’s now 8:30am. Since I’ve put some of the weight back on, I wake up after a few hours due to back pain. Generally, I’ll just find a comfortable position and go back to sleep but I’m expecting a package in the mail and don’t want to sleep through the front door buzzer. I’ve also had the strangest dream… though aren’t they all. I’ve been working with a book entitled Busting Loose from the Money Game and strange things are starting to happen. I may have been partly lucid because I think I woke up originally at around 7:30am and went back to sleep.
The dream started in a lush field high up on a hill, overlooking a large medieval city. Some knights arrived and I told them that I was a wizard from another world. They escorted me down to the city. I must have been young because the scene changed to a school of sorts inside the city. I was sitting amongst other student wizards and a man at the front was giving them their final lecture. His voice sounded just like Victor Lucas from Electric Playground.
I was looking at some sort of price list and thinking of what I needed to buy (staff, robes, etc.). I looked in my wallet and found some American money though the bills appeared to have been torn in half. It looked as though I didn’t have enough money to buy what I needed. A couple of the students were discussing their classes. I asked what they were talking about. I don’t recall the name she gave it but the student beside me described it as the study of exacting precision in sigil-making. I told her that I thought it was all in the mind.
I glanced at my book and saw a number of drawings I had made. I noticed that while they were good, I was disappointed because they seemed different than the source material that was strangely lying nearby. The drawing was of a male face with a left eye much larger than the right. In my drawings, the left eye wasn’t as exaggerated though otherwise, they seemed quite accurate. I looked up and grabbed my large jar of change to see if there were any bills in there. There were; I pulled out some smaller bills but as I dug deeper, I found more and more bills hiding under the loose change. Strange ones too; I found a $7 dollar bill and a $12 dollar bill. I think the $12 had an odd font.
As the dream ended, Victor Lucas said that he wanted to see my character sheet, which made me nervous because I was from another universe (had I broken some of the rules of this universe?)
Now, I mentioned my previous awakening at 7:30 because this dream seems largely wish fulfillment so I wonder if I was partly lucid and just guiding myself through a fantasy. Otherwise, it’s filled with interesting omens. First, being a wizard, as I have resolved myself in my midlife, to make spiritual success my number one priority. The torn bills were curious as well because in my post-dream analysis, I realize that they were also folded so they were either twice as long as regular American dollars or they were transformed from torn to folded.
Commenting to the sorceress beside me felt almost lucid. I’d felt as though I knew something they didn’t; the true secret of magic. It’s not about the details of sigils and rituals. It’s about the state of mind. Now looking at my drawings seems completely incongruent. Why would I be looking at my art homework while sitting in a medieval castle and buying my wizard gear? Of course why would I be buying my wizard gear with American money?
The money jar was fascinating because it wasn’t there initially and I didn’t conjure it like a lucid dreamer. I just grabbed it and reached in as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. I even felt guilty as the shifting coins were making a racket during Victor’s lecture. Initially, there were a few small bills and I was resigning myself to the fact that I couldn’t completely outfit myself but as I dug deeper the bills became larger and more common as though contrary to gravity, the paper money had sunk to the bottom of the jar. Of course, the omen is just I am more abundant than I realize. This is what made me record this dream. It’s a very noteworthy incident (no pun intended).
Finally, the comment from Victor that he wanted to see my sheet struck me afterwords. It’s the realization that I am the player and the character simultaneously. Again, perhaps it was injected by the waking mind but this whole Process in Busting Loose is about realizing that we are creators of our own universe so we are both the players and characters of our own lives. Life is a deeply immersive role-playing game.
In any case, I’ve been meaning to post on Busting Loose from the Money Game and a few of my recent insights. I’ve been lazy. Since I felt impelled to get this dream recorded, things will be out of order (results before intro) but I’ll post my initial thoughts later today.
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.