The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 2.

There are three basic stages in the life of a person engaged in spiritual development.
The first is characterized by the transition from "normal consciousness" to a "spiritual consciousness".
(NB. I really dislike the word "spiritual" because I find it horribly unspecific, and there are a lot of weird connotations behind it. I'm using it however, because it's instantly recognizable and it's simple. I would like to make it a little more clear what I mean here though. For me a spiritual state is one where the functions of normal consciousness are replaced with the functions of a conscious capable of expanded awareness and appreciation of singularities. I think that's fair enough. If you'd like to contest it, or if you think it's insufficient in anyway please let me know and we can discuss it.)

This shift usually takes the form of what Crowley called "the lesser trance of sorrow". I don't think this is a necessary step in a spiritually minded person's progress but it does seem common. This state is characterized by a realization of the futility of all "earthly" endeavors.
I personally went through this when I was about 13. I started thinking a lot about what I wanted to be when I was older and I just couldn't justify anything to myself. I just kept thinking that no matter what I choose it won't make any difference after I die. Even if I left behind something great, like a work of art, or a great idea, there would come a time when even that would dissolve and the people who new about the idea would die. This trance is often accompanied by an acute depressive state that subsides by realizing that the "earthly" pursuits are in fact futile but that there is another way. I quickly realized that if I were in "heaven" (the only concept in my vocabulary at the time that even approximated an enlightened state) I would be past all that, I wouldn't need these trivial ideas anymore. I just wouldn't care because I'd be past all that.
This left me with a deep calm for a while until I found my true path. I had found the reason and once I had found the way I was off running.
I think the important thing to remember with spirituality is that some people want it and others don't. There comes a point in spiritual development when you really can't force it anymore. You come to see that everything you know must be left behind and either you're compelled or you aren't. It's in your blood. No amount of philosophizing can change this (see ! & ?).
The true fulfillment of the spiritual path seems to lie in a state of consciousness that is entirely enigmatic to the mundane consciousness. Once you've reached a certain point it seems, you are no longer willing to admit that you've ever done anything at all. Like Crowley says "In fact, the man in Kether is out of all relation to these boots and hats." The enlightened mind is no longer willing to abide on the material plane. But it goes even further than that I think, he's out of all relation to the material.
He is out of all relation.
This also implies that he would be unwilling to affect anything so distant from "himself" or affect anything at all for that matter.
This is where my point lies. As Crowley says:

"But (you will doubtless say) I pith your ? itself with another ?: Why question life at all? Why not remain "a clean-living Irish gentleman" content with his handicap, and contemptuous of card and pencil? Is not the Buddha's goad "Everything is sorrow" little better than a currish whine? What do I care for old age, disease, and death? I'm a man, and a Celt at that. I spit on your sniveling Hindu prince, emasculate with debauchery in the first place, and asceticism in the second. A weak, dirty, paltry cur, sir, your Gautama!

"Yes, I think I have no answer to that. The sudden apprehension of some vital catastrophe may have been the exciting cause of my conscious devotion to the attainment of Adeptship --- but surely the capacity was there, inborn. Mere despair and desire can do little; anyway, the first impulse of {132} fear was the passing spasm of an hour; the magnetism of the path itself was the true lure. It is as foolish to ask me "Why do you adep?" as to ask God "Why do you pardon?" C'est son métier. "

What's the point if it's not good for your poor health, or won't bring you more money?
The answer is that the path of wisdom is innate in some people and not in others.
I was born to Adept, c'est mon metier.

I've already said a bit about the third stage (what little I know of it) but tomorrow I'll go over it again in a bit more detail along with the second stage.
For now read ! & ?.

13

I've been thinking a lot about death today
It's a comfort to think I'll be like they are.
Keep quiet and it'll pass I thought,
Just sit here on the banks and a boat will come
I'll just sit here and wait for it.
And came it did I saw it aways away and sat up.
I saw a man in it, not callous but serene,
I saw his face and I loved him.
He was blank as a night shade of Salvia,
and just as plastic I think.
I couldn't tell if he loved me back
but I still don't care.
I love the end and I can feel it as a part of me.
Death is the bringer of fortune in time,
It's all gotta go down sometime,
and has before I thought,
I loved him even more.
I can feel him beside me even now,
his breath isn't heavy but it smells like nothing else,
I can feel it on my bones as I love him,
He brought me here, he'll take me back,
Over and over and over again.
Is this hell?
Cuz I think I must be dreaming.
Doesn't everyone think of this
and feel the scent of peace
on the tips of every hair?
I can see him look at me from his boat,
I've been waiting so long and I love it.
I love waiting, it comforts me,
keeps me quiet when I can't feel it.
I'd like to meet him up close again,
I forgot how much to feel.
I forgot how much to smell.
It's not like they won't love me too,
I came to be with them.

Black Bush

The Spiritual Side of Life. Part 1.

The spiritual aspect of life is both the most complex and the most useful. Almost everything "spiritual" that you do has carryover to almost every other aspect of life. This is due to the fact that the basic spiritual exercises deal with the control of breath, the control of mind, the control of nature, the development of intuition, and the development of what can be called "life force."
I'd like to deal with each of these in their own place at a later time, but for now I'd like to go over what's obviously necessary for gaining a decent intellectual grasp of the whole matter.
Reading a spiritual text is often a developmental exercise in it's own right. The carryover isn't as great as some of the other exercises but there is still a whole heap of benefits. For instance, prolonged contemplation of texts like the Tao Te Ching or Liber AL will eventually lead to certain very "useful" realizations like the benefits of the path of non action, the power of love, true morality, and a lot of other very profound "secrets of life". Someone whose inclination is heavily intellectual could probably achieve a high level of realization just from contemplative readings, but it's my opinion that there are much more efficient (though sometimes significantly more uncomfortable) ways of attaining the same result.

For today though I'd like to give a brief outline of the specific texts that have helped me on my way. This list is by no means complete. For instance I've never really studied Islam, Voodoo, Santeria, the Essene traditions, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and a ton of others. I fully intend to at some point, I just haven't yet.

To start you should get a taste for everything.
I think it's a really good idea to realize that all religions are essentially the same with the only differeces coming from terminology.
This list is more or less copied from the general reading list of the brotherhood of A:.A:. Most of these texts can be found for free online through Sacred-Texts.com

Study the Taoist traditions with Lao Tzu and Kwuang Tzi.
The Buddhist traditions with The Suttas and The Dhammapada.
The Hindu traditions with the Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Vedas, and the books on Yoga (Siva Samhita, the hathayoga pradipika, the Aphorisms of Patanjali, and Raja Yoga by Vivekananda).
The Christian traditions with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pistis Sophia, and the spiritual guide of Michael Molinos.
The Thelemic traditions with Liber AL, Liber ABA, Liber Aleph, The Equinox, and The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (just to name a few).
The Qabalistic traditions with 777, The Book of Thoth, and the works of Eliphas Levi (which will also give you a fair grounding in Hermetic traditions). Qabbalah has a mixed heritage so you might also want to study some of the Lurianic texts to get the Jewish side of things, but from what I've studied the Hermetic tradition is both clearer and more complete (mostly due to Crowley's contributions).
Also the pantheons (taking each god and goddess to be a representation of either a force of nature or an aspect of the human condition) of all the pagan traditions, esp. the Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu.

This is a very good foundation of reading and if you are diligent you'll be different person when you're done.

The 5 Areas of Life. Intro.

I apologize for the lame ass post from yesterday but this time I had a really good excuse. I started writing my usual morning post and everything was going swimmingly when I realized that I might be on to something. I started systematically going through every area of life where I have found at least some degree of mastery and I figured that I should be sharing this everyone.
I've found a lot of really valuable information and developed a lot of very powerful techniques and realizations for living a highly fulfilled life.
You want to learn how to imitate my meager success?

I've broken down the areas of life into 5 sections.
I'll be dealing with each of them on separate days for the next week or two.
I'm gonna be as thorough as possible so it might take me a few days to get everything out on any one topic.

The 5 sections are:

1. The spiritual.
2. The intellectual.
3. The emotional.
4. The social.
5. The physical.

Now, there are a few things that overlap two or more of these sections, like money, sex, and love, so there might a slight bit of repetition but you don't mind I'm sure.
Also I'll be paying close attention in particular to those things (exercises, and books in particular) that have a strong carryover effect to two or more sections. This carryover effect is, I believe, a greatly overlooked concept in most people's lives. I'm absolutely certain that my refusal to spend significant time on anything that doesn't carryover to at least one other area of my life is the reason that I've been able to accomplish what I have at such a young age.

So hang on cuz you'll never be the same again.

Another Festival of JimJams

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the interconnectedness of all things.
I've been considering things like Samadhi, entanglement, divinity, superposition, how Mandelbrot sets might be a reflection of natural processes and how it is very reasonable to say that existence is One.
I've been considering these things, and I find that the more I consider them the more one question in particular keeps popping up in my mind "if this is the natural state of being why do we usually feel so separate? Why are we given separate bodies, a separate ego, a distinct sense of being an individual when in reality we are merely reflections of the whole of existence? If we are unity why do feel like this?"

I think of these things and one experience in particular keeps coming back to me.

When you start reading anything of Aleister Crowley's you're often faced with a similar question. This idea was something he dealt with very thoroughly. He even devised meditations and exercises to help us comprehend this aspect of ourselves and how this idea can be resolved.
He called it the practice of the magical diary.

The exercise is really simple and really isn't as much work as it looks like at first (who's afraid of work anyway?).
Basically all you do is get a notebook and start writing out your life in as much detail as possible.
You can start by writing out a bit about your family, traditions your family has, your distant relatives, what parts of the world they came from, what kind of work they engaged in, and anything else that seems important.
Then you can start writing about your parents, how they met, what work they do, what are their hobbies, their body types, their humor and disposition, their parenting styles, how they see they see the world and anything else you can think of.
Now you can start writing about yourself.
Be as detailed as possible!
Write out your first memories, write out experiences from school, who your friends were and what they were like, how you liked to play, what interested you, what scared you, your views and attitudes about sexuality, and anything else.
Then as you start writing about yourself as a teen or a young adult (then later as an adult) start including more details about your political views, what books you read, what your personal philosophy is like, what your sex life is like, what you prefer sexually, your attitude towards sex in general (sex is important), your views on religion and how you came to those, who are your friends now, what are your hobbies and literally as much as you can think of.
(something you might find useful is writing on only one side of the page or do it on the computer so that you can fill things in as new memories pop up.)

After completing this exercise (which can take anywhere from a week to a month depending on how many hours a day you put in) you'll be able to read it over and intelligently trace some very obvious currents in your life. You'll find that perhaps as a young child you really enjoyed contact sports and anything martial but because of emotional imprint events those tendencies were suppressed and ended up coming out in your life in unhealthy ways. Or you might find that you've always really enjoyed drawing, ever since your first memories, and you find that some of your happiest memories are from the simple enjoyment of art.

You'll notice these currents as clear as day. They'll be unmistakable.

Then you might start asking yourself "why have I been struggling so hard against these things all my life when it's so obvious that I was born to do this?"

This is where it gets really interesting.
How can we deny that we are living a life with a definite purpose when we can see it so clearly once we gain even a little perspective?
How can we claim that we are not part of some plan when everything seems to fit together so perfectly (even the seemingly imperfect things)?

So I've been playing with the idea that we are not "separate" from this unity arbitrarily or by some fault of our own or of nature but by design.

We are all supposed to be doing something specific, our individuality is a sign of our function, and fulfilling that function seems to be necessary to the fulfillment of the function of the whole.