The Need to be Right

Stepping away from the need to be right or validated allows us to accept the opinion of others. Creating dissension with others is an attempt for the unconscious mind to feed that sense of self-worth and self-acceptance we crave to feel secure in our understanding of the world. I am not saying disagreeing with someone is unacceptable but there is a difference between disagreeing and an outright witch war over differences of personal perception. Disagreement is a normal part of life; pushing negativity and creating divides based on otherwise simple things is self-serving.

These are some very good words from Crystal Blanton from her book Bridging the Gap. I mentioned that I'd be posting bits of her book as I read it in my Pantheacon 2011 Review.

Yeah, I have posted in the past about my former need to always be right. This hit me as part of my early work.

For the locals, I have learned that Crystal will be appearing in Fresno at the Central Valley Pagan Pride Day.

My HGA and Lon Milo DuQuette

This post will go to and fro a bit. I have a lot to catch up on.  The first part is a follow-up to a post of April 17, 2011. That post entitled, A Little Chat with My HGA, is significantly covered in this post as I update the results.

You must buy new clothes. This is not a want but a need. Never mind the money. Just like the removal of aspartame has impacted your body and spirit so too will this. Buy high quality footwear.

The new clothes have made me feel better at work. Some more new clothes this weekend made me feel a bit more put together socially as well.  The removal of aspartame has cured all my back problems. Occasionally, I will have a little pain but it is gone before I can reach for the Tylenol. I am stretching, doing deep knee bends and twists just to make sure all is well. I climbed a ton of stairs this weekend and took Lon DuQuette on a 6 hour car trip and only felt the normal pain anyone my age would. I am 100% pleased. It is very nice to live a pain free life!

You have always noticed that the flaw in the GD system is that there is no health component. The body is virtually ignored. To move and improve your body is your work in ZAM. You are not there yet but such work is not always linear. Begin now.

I have eaten healthier on purpose. I have removed by highest fat snack, peanut butter, and caffienne. I have added more fruits and vegetables. My diet isn't great but so much better than before. Without meaning too, I have found myself leaving food behind in restaurants as all restaurant food is too plentiful. 

I tried to sign up for beginning yoga but I knew I'd miss too many of the intro classes with my current schedule. I will catch the next round.

It is time to apply yourself to GD studies again. Turn off the ball games. Again, you will be happier in this and this will help your spirit, just like removing aspartame. It is also important for [censored]*.

I have finally started to do this. 

She is what you think she is. [This is in regards to the Gentle Soul.]

Lon DuQuette met the Gentle Soul for the first time this weekend. I view Lon has a holy man. Lon fell in love with her. He said, "[the Gentle Soul] displays a kindness rarely seen in this century." I can't think of a more unique or higher compliment. He also bought and delivered coffee to her. Later, he posted wonderful comments on her Facebook page. 

I will continue to show you past lives. Yes, they are real past lives. Like everything else, your understanding and perception of them will grow.

I haven't seen much of this recently but I haven't asked with a peaceful heart either. I have previously reported the items events he showed me right after that session with him.

Trust in your silence. Have complete trust in it. 

I have done so.

A Car Trip with Lon Milo DuQuette

I had the distinct pleasure of giving Lon a ride from his Costa Mesa home to Oakhurst, California. This is a long drive. Normally, when I have my mentor or Lon, who I consider a mentor of a less intimate relationship, I ask questions. I ask LOTS of questions. 

My last few chats with my mentor have been very short. In the car with Lon, I had only a few questions. One of which was such a stretch that it was almost embarrassing asking it. This allowed Lon to share what he wanted to share. He brought CDs and shared his love of Cole Porter with me. I got to know him on a much more personal level and found him just as loving and caring. 

He honored me by sharing his personal insights into the 5=6 and anecdotes about his own struggles with the little personality. These stories are his to share and would be very inappropriate for me to mention. However, I was pleased that his analysis of the five is right in line with where I am at and how I have perceived it. The six part is a very recent manifestation for him. Surprising! Though, I think this is more like a 'power-up' or revisiting than anything else. It reminded me very much of how I am revisiting elemental issues now. However, he said it just as I understood it should be. I couldn't say I have experienced what he had at all. But, I could say I have had enough experience to truly understand what he meant. 

Lon is one of the few personalities that I deeply admire. I will cherish the memories of this car ride.

A Sword

I have been asked to bless a sword for a newly remarried couple that are close friends of mine. I will be blogging about that each step of the way. It is an honor to be asked to such a thing.

Mind Reading

I can read the mind of the Gentle Soul as easily as I can here others talk. I learned this weekend that this form of communication is just as fraught with danger as other forms. I heard half a sentence. I could have panicked and jumped to conclusions. I could have been offended. Instead, I simply ignored it until I found an appropriate time to ask. This is a much larger step of personal growth than being able to read a mind. 

Goetia

It has come time to do some goetic work. I will follow Lon's advice on the topic. I may or may not post on this. 

Patience

Tonight, I realized the patience with which my mentor has worked. I took a moment to admire it. Then, suddenly, I realized I am acting within that same patience. I didn't know I had much patience at all.

Thoughts That Have Been Running Through My Mind

How can we live fully within the purest (note highest is no longer there) form of our souls?
What do we have to get rid of to do that?
Is it necessary to get rid of anything?
I don't hate myself but there is some part, some restraint, some perpetual curse, a la the previously posted video, that must be deal with, moved, overcome, removed.
Why am I only a cranky ass at work? Am I just in a purely wrong place or is there something to learn?
Reincarnation exists. What can I learn from that?

I am now praying to five spiritual entities using the Pray of Jabez as a model.

What will it take to break through? Incremental progress is not satisfying right now.

My back is healed but I still live as if it is not.

Why is it so hard to live in the FULL? Shouldn't that be the easy part?

I can't do the path of Sagittarius yet. I just can't. It isn't time but oh how I want it to be.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu That may be a better way of saying what I meant to say in the perfection post. 

Note to reader: Yes, I am completley sober.

Of course the answer to all of these questions is...SHUT THE FUCK UP and be silent.

Issues

I don't read as many blogs as I used to. Today, I was trying to find some information and came across RO's latest post Working on Prime Materia. In that post, he makes this statement.


Too much occult discussion is wasted on introspective application of magical rites. I don't talk a lot about addressing your issues using magic because I know for a fact that if you start doing practical magic, you will have to face those issues anyway. Any magical act that puts you in contact with a higher power is going to stir up shit that needs to be burned away.


Here we have a fundamental disagreement. If the magick you do is going to stir up your shit no matter what you are doing, then I posit that point of the magick you are doing is to stir up your shit. If that is the point, why not just start there? Why delay the process by sending the energy off to manifest one's selfish desires first?


For many, the reason they do practical magick first is that they really want power over someone or something. Okay. They will learn that lesson. The reason for others, though they would never admit it because they don't know this what they are doing, is that they are avoiding their shit. I offer two examples from the blogs.


Once upon a time, I pissed off WitchDoctorJoe. I didn't learn the lesson, so I pissed off RO. I bet twenty people saw that coming. I was avoiding dealing with my shit or at least that portion of it.


Once upon a time RO became way to involved in a goetic spirit. Many of us saw tragedy coming and tried to warn him. None of us could pinpoint how it would manifest. We saw this because the magick he was doing was not solving a fundamental problem. It was a band-aid. He was avoiding whatever his problem was, consciously or not, just like I did.


Had someone gotten through to either one of us and reminded of us what the Great Work is about the pain would have be avoided for more than just one person.


This is why it is important for teachers, writers and those touched by the calling, to emphasize the personal nature of this work. If you don't emphasize the personal alchemy, people forget. Why? Because they want to forget! This stuff is difficult and painful.


Those that forget externalize their issues and lash out. There is always someone to blame or someone else to look down upon. There is always some cause external to themselves or some accident of birth. They congratulate themselves in seeing the fault in others. In short, they think their stirred shit is a tasty stew. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to deal with the resulting dysentery. 


Practical magick is often the spiritual Pepto Bismol that allows us to avoid the karmic result of previous actions or current soul/personality space. Yeah, it will work but the lesson will repeat UNLESS YOU CHANGE. So, why not do magick directly to cause that change? Oh, yeah, we want to avoid consequences. We want to hang on to material things etc. That is just another ingredient in the stew. Here, have some Pepto.


If you forget about the personal alchemy of the Great Work, Hermetic magick will throw those same issues at you again and again in different forms. Since we are not monks, those issues play out through our friends and acquaintances. Yeah that new car you got with magick to replace the one you totaled while drunk is nice but you didn't solve the problem. You will get drunk again and your friends will have to take care of you. Seems to me the better thing to do is stop the drinking. Otherwise you have to ask the question, why are you feeding your friends shit stew while telling them that you love them?


Oddly, there is very little nutritional value in shit stew. If you don't understand what you are eating, you spirituality starve to death. Hence, repeated reminders of this aspect of the work are necessary. 


This in no way should be taken as a failure to value the rest of the work, magick, practical magick, blogs or authors that do not emphasize these things.


Here is another perspective on why we avoid dealing with our shit. I have no idea who this woman is, her background or what she teaches. However, she does make a point about a problem we all have to various degrees. Thanks to George for his comment pointing to this person.






Speaking of Personal Alchemy


I had a success of sorts yesterday. If you read yesterday's post, you read of my uncles diatribe during my dad's memorial service. In times past, I'd have taken the microphone and said something like, "I had thought this day was about my father. Thank you for reminding me there are other points of view." I didn't do that. He has a blog. I almost commented on his blog about his inappropriate behavior. I didn't do that. My dad's wife had arranged lunch on Sunday and invited me along. He would be there. I texted declining the invitation. Instead of telling her why, I complimented her on the beautiful service she created. 


Instead of causing more pointless anger that wouldn't have changed a thing, I simply shut up. Every once in a while, I get it right. 


This isn't a full success. My reaction was the same. I simply stopped behaving in the same way. Full success means the same situation appears again and my reaction doesn't include the things I kept myself from doing.


WELCOME


Marylin welcome to the blogs. I see I was your first Follow. Thank you and enjoy.

The Gods are Perfect. Can We Be As Well?

This is one of those topics that makes me wish I was a better writer. I am going to have difficulty articulating what I want to say. This makes this one of those posts that makes me glad to blog. One of you will likely help me clarify my own writing and ideas.

The predominant religion of my geography is Christianity. While there are many forms of that religion, all seem to hold up for our examination a perfect god. It tells us to aspire to that perfection. Then the culture around that religion, if not the religion itself, instills a moral code that guarantees we cannot meet that standard. Show me a healthy teenager that hasn't lusted after someone. Show me anyone that has never coveted something that was not theirs.  So, we fall short of the idea of perfection. Insecurities grow. The rational for this it that Jesus was both god and man. Since he was man, it is reasonable to aspire to his perceived perfection.

I believe this is correct for varying definitions of perfection.

All gods are perfect. Perfection being defined as total unity with everything within their purview. This is what makes them so strong. For instance, I have experienced Hermes as unified with the idea of unifying things. An example of this is his accepted trait of communication. In order to communicate, person A must encode a message, send it through a medium to be received by person B who then decodes the words according to his understanding. Hermes helps to unify the intended message with the code, unifies the code with the medium, the medium to the target and aids in decoding and unifying the message with the receiver. Each step is a unification with something. Praying to Hermes can help with all levels of communication. He can even help with how we code things so that the receiver has a greater understanding of our message as s/he decodes our words.

There are many other things Hermes does. The above example is but one. My point is that He does these things perfectly. He is perfect. It isn't perfection in some human moral sense but perfect in His unification with his god-purpose or role.

This then implies that all gods are perfect within their god-purpose. Applying human morality perfection is impossible for me when it comes to the gods of Christianity. Killing 14,000+ people to give the Jewish people land isn't morally justifiable in human terms. As a god-purpose, it may be perfect. This then carries over to every other god from the destruction of Cthulu to the balance of Maat to the peaceful deity Shazbat. Hey, if Lovecraft can make up a god, so can I.

Allow me to move back to the idea of man aspiring to perfection. Moral perfection can be impossible. No one has maintained that rigid level of self-control over the course of a lifetime. Even if they did mores change over time leading to a sense of past imperfection whether valid or not. Well, maybe Mother Theresa reached a standard of moral perfection for varying definitions of success in that regard.

The perfection of Being rather than morality just may be possible for us humans.

By perfection of Being, I mean the absolute unification with everything in one's soul-purpose. Some may call this true will but its more. One can do their true will and still fall short of perfection. For instance, it may have been Millard Fillmore's true will to be president but I'm willing to bet he wasn't totally unified with all aspects of the duties of his position.

If one is absolutely unified with one's soul-purpose, the concepts of morality and social mores fade away. The concept of being less so I must confess falls away. These things get in the way of the perfection of being and must be dropped eventually as one approaches this state. I fully acknowledge dropping them too soon can make on an egomaniacal  danger to us all.

Most of what we need to drop our preprogrammed insecurities that prevent us or restrict us from acting in accordance with our souls. I am still working on this level. Yet maybe, perfection of Being is possible over the course of lifetimes. I think it is a much more useful concept than moral perfection.

Evangelical Invasion of My Father's Memorial Service

No, I am not talking about Westboro Baptist Church. What happened was nearly as disrespectful as WBC's activities.

My father was not a religious man at all. He simply didn't believe in such things. Yet, he fought and risked his life for your ability to practice yours. He saw what Hitler did to the Jewish people and said, "Never again." He found my religious practices laughable yet he respected my goal of personal growth and striving to purify my human nature.

Today, his wife put on a beautiful memorial service. Many people said many sincere and wonderful things about him and his life. It made me proud just to know him.

His brother took a turn speaking. He spoke of a loathing for his parents. He spoke of a loathing for America that he eventually got over. He then went into a fear-based evangelical sales job and asked, "What if I am right?" Really? You interrupt a man's memorial service with a self-righteous sermon and that's all you got? He said virtually nothing about my dad. My father would have laughed at his ineptitude and been angered by the disrespect he showed people of other faiths and my grandparents.

I have posted here about my issues with Christianity. I am not proud of them.

I can't post an angry anti-Christian rant as there were Christians in attendance that do demonstrate the love of Christ. Instead, I will pray for the healing of a very angry heart. This man wrapped himself in the flag and the name of Christ but demonstrated he has failed to find the love the Christ is said to have. Such anger, such loathing, such egomania is not of Christ as he has been described to me. Sad.

Edit: One of the things that keeps coming back to me on this is that the rest of the service was beautifully done. People obviously loved my dad. They expressed that love. It was beautiful. Yet, it is hard not to focus on the negative. I should be able to focus on that positive side.

Broken Glass

Last night, the full crew of the Conclave of the Greek Key meet for work with Hermes. In a previous session, he told us we needed some things namely flowers, wine, bread and cheese. We had these on hand.

The working was very very long. I think I was invoked upon for at least an hour and a half maybe longer.

The gist of the message was simple. Live within your souls. Drop everything socially mandated. Drop societal mores. Drop insecurities. Drop. Drop. Drop. Live in the perfection of your immortal souls.

We are human. Obviously, we just don't drop everything like that. Everyone has various levels of resistance. Sometimes, in magickal rites, when the energy doesn't manifest as is in proper with the intent, odd physical things happen. In this case, after the rite, I reached for a glass from the cupboard to give my friend a glass of water. The glass had shattered. I assure you no one put that glass in the cupboard that way. I cannot say it did not shatter earlier but it was the foremost glass. I think I would have noticed as I retrieved others earlier.

It is funny how at times I will imagine what I expect Them to do or say. Such anticipation never meets with reality. This time proved the same. The odd part was that he spoke of something I was thinking of in another context: the perfection of the gods and man. I will post a diatribe on that soon.

Watchtower Rite

Jason Miller asked why bloggers don't include the watchtower ritual in their notes.

The reason is most do not do it. Therefore, they do not write about it. Why don't they do it?

First, because many people work with primers and get effects and then never progress. Secondly, because some of use the 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree openings. These relate to a formula we must keep in mind. The ritual itself reinforces the concepts of the grade.

Lastly, I remember early on asking my mentor if I could do the middle pillar but use the entire tree. His answer was, "Are you quiet THAT quiet?" I wasn't. The broader egregore has a tendency to keep its members in a place until they can move to the next level.

Though Jason is correct. That ritual can blow the doors off.

A Couple of Notable Issues

Some notable things are occurring:

Mind Reading

I have begun to literally read the Gentle Soul's mind. I can finish her mental sentences or answer her internal questions as if she was speaking them out loud. It isn't a constant thing. I have to be really focussed on her but it isn't difficult. I don't even try.

The other day in a meeting, I tried to read the minds of other people in the room. With one, I encountered a fiery barrier. In other, I could only obtain his self-perception, "I am good." With others, I got nothing at all except an undefinable block. I didn't push hard into any of the barriers. The odd thing was, every time I did it, the target look towards me and paid close attention to me. As soon as I stopped, the target's attention moved on to another.

Sensitivity


I am very emotionally sensitive right now. Conflict amongst others sets me on edge. Anger in my direction makes nervous energy course through my body even when my mind is not nervous. After a bit, my mind will catch up but it feels odd to have the sensation start in the body and move to the mind.

I have no such issues if the anger or conflict is created by myself.

Mind and Body

MIND

I haven't posted much on this but I have been working on concentration and focus. I am performing a very simple exercise. When I go for a walk or running errands, I stop my train of thought and pay attention to my surroundings in a focussed way.

This has allowed me to spot some interesting things, such as an undercover female cop dressed as a homeless person, various small animals, people standing in little nooks that I would have missed etc. Today, I was walking in a neighborhood near my workplace. It is a very old rich neighborhood. The houses are majestic and interesting. The landscaping is full of old trees and neatly mowed lawns. The place is a sea of green. I snapped my mind into focus with the realization I wasn't concentrating. Immediately, I noticed out of the corner of my eye one neglected house  on the opposite side of the street. It was small and everything was overgrown. I would have walked right past it.

That seems simple but I was shocked. It was SO OBVIOUSLY out of place. Yet, my monkey mind completely wrote it off. I am finding these exercises in focussed awareness more and more important.

BODY

Recently, I posted about my HGA telling me it was time to work on my physical self. When my back was so problematic, I was careful not to stress it. Now, that I am gaining confidence by the day, I feel it would be wise to start stretching those muscles out. I don't want to do anything fully harsh after all this neglect. So, I am going to drop by the local yoga place and start there. STRETCH...

PROBLEM?

I reported a healing with an obvious and immediate physical manifestation the other day. The bruise remains smaller but the next day the pain increased. I am not sure what that means.