Psalms of An Aeon
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(This isn't a psalm proper, more like an interlude or an appendix. -JME)
I admired the Buddha and sought the Buddha, therefore I learned his words and learned his teachings and entered his temples and prayed there within them and left there with full hands so happy.
Then I talked about it. Then I talked about it. Then I talked about and even I talked about it.
And yet my hands were full...
So I emptied my hands, entered the Temple of Within Myself, and sat there in utter silent contemplation of the pure awareness.
I sat there in silent contemplation forever until I perceived the transient illusion that is the I,
Dropped everything for good and rejoiced and became the Buddha.
The wind that blows is the same as the I who knows.
And what then? Shall you mock me? Despise me? Belittle me? Call me names?
Then the man ceased and the Adept took on the vestment of the man.
And then there was spoken: Or would you think that you do harm by the attacking of yon little man? Ha!
Now, would you mock Me? I who am without?
Would you like to kill Me?
Would you rend My chest asunder and feed upon Mine still-beating heart? Trinkets and toys.
And having thus partaken in this sacrament of the worthless flesh of God, that shell, would you then be Wise and not be and become As Unto A God yourself?
Or would you gloat over a victory that never happened, amongst the senses, yea, amongst the herds of the world of your senses?
The treasure of that house is empty.
It is consumed by the treasure that is beyond treasure.
All that is real and all that is known and all that you are is but the Mirage of Continuity.
In Silence is it starved. In Union it is shattered.
What I call mind you call consciousness.
Consciousness is awareness that is not aware of anything nor aware of being something; it is just aware.
"I am aware." "I see this." "I hear that." "I am so-and-so.": These are thoughts, illumined by consciousness but coming after it.
A lamp shines. What it shines on does not change anything of its shining.
Stop grasping onto what it lights up and simply be the lamp.
Behold! the goal is reached and it is but the First Step on the Endless Path.
There is a plague.
Beneath the inhabitants of a small dark orb is set a kindling to enflame their souls.
The spark of the unity and truth of God can ignite it.
But misunderstanding blinds right vision with its seductive haze of wantonness and waste matter; the haze obscures the holiness of wantonness and waste matter.
Shouldn't I, even I too, seek out my rule in the Kingdom of Many?
Before every center lies a box covered in dirt, yea, covered by the dust of reason.
Woe it is to bring Out the purity within, dragging it out with dust-covered paws.
And not in sooth.
For there never was a box; it was naught but that dust in thine eye.
The ordinary confines be broken!
The hermetic seal of all partitions of experience have come undone.
Yoga means union. -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
#29
*The true beginning to any path worth taking is its End. You are as a bucket of the water that is holy. Your aspiration to the highest is the road to the pouring out the vessel of your individuality, the water that is in there, the personal life, into the endless water that has no name. Indeed, having purified the substance it is prepared for nothing but to be consumed. That water of your soul shall avail in the sea without horizons. Formless, you shall be formless and freed beyond the scope of constricted viewing. There is no "I" in vessel so let it sit and catch the rain.
Purifying the mind has naught to do with morality, it has everything to do with the dissolving of complexity to make the mind a simple and unified tool for expression. No more, no less. It is therefore a lofty application of "love under will." The water is poured into the water.
The mind is a necklace of impressions strung together by the false association to an "I," which is nothing but a limiting, illusory, perpetually self-insisting and self-important, ever-dependent perspective. This is the "essence" of the Abyss. This is the unreal appearance of an Ego experiencing and subsisting on an existence fabricated by way of the conditioning caused by its attachment to the mind's thoughts (perceptions, memories, beliefs, etc.), the which are in turn ordered by their ruling predispositions. This is the dream from which the Adept has at times awoken, yet still so often falls back into. The man of Earth aspires; the Lover comes face-to-face in embrace; the Hermit is.
A small bit of water comes out of the water that the water may know the water. Then in ecstasy is the water poured back into the water. "The pain of division is as nothing and the joy of dissolution all." This is the end of your aspiration, hence we have come full circle to the Beginning. Yea, to the Beginning.
Thus is concluded Solve. Coagula follows. Actually, my mind just exploded like cotton candy all over the place.*
Love is the law, love under will.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
#30
*We skry as we leap upon these pillars of ancient stone,
Towards their pinnacles, to their peak, we push past through the known
By being wed as twin-sword lovers, seven lights encircle the sky,
We cry, we rive the seven worlds, then in clarity we die,
And there we dine and we dance amidst the thrill of thrilling life
In supernal beauty beyond the culling and the cutting of the knife
Of shape and name. We do the same,
For which we are and not, no form there can we claim.Mute second forsaken, the first becomes
A familiar flow to be in, like children
Attain we our dauntless will to attune
To the way o'er the pastures of lien.*Love is the law, love under will.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
31
*We say that we have found or can find satisfaction in the objects of the senses and in the sentiments of thought. This is not completely accurate though considering we will still maintain an eagerness to have those things present the next moment and the next and so on. Our desires can not then be durably satisfied through foreign means because success to that end would be wholly contingent upon the impossible stasis of those conditions which bring about that state. Since said gratification is constantly permeated by unceasingly arising desires aimed at its conditional circumstances, it sooner or later flounders and fails to the continuity of change. Therefore what is commonly seen as satisfactory is a temporary wish phantasm.
Always want more, never enough: here today, gone tomorrow. Never enough, always want more: here today, gone tomorrow. I have it now and I want it then, and when I have it then I will want it later. It never stops.
Essentially we need to recognize that the things we value and yearn for are not really the issue. What makes us slaves to our desire is the wrong comprehension as to its source. We identify its cause and solution with external phenomena. Yet it is only because they very briefly satisfy the agitated mind that we feel happiness when procuring desired items or circumstances . This atmosphere of contentment has nothing to do with the external things themselves, as soon afterwards their possession will no longer be able to provide sufficient calm to the mind and it unavoidably becomes anxious again with the revival of turbulent longing. Then due to ignorance it shall appear to us that the sole method to relieve this renewed urge of desire is to chase a freshly christened craving. Rinse and repeat.
Desire is merely perturbance of the mind.
"All's rest, devoid of mark;
How should desires fix tooth?
When they are past, thou surely hast
The silence of the truth."Outside of us is the world of physics which provides contextual content for the senses. The world that we actually experience is the world of the mind. But it is the world of identification (née attachment), or propensity, that informs that mental realm. These are veils. We shine from behind the fantasy of being a person in a world of mind portrayed by matter. Lasting peace is our nature; desires ostensibly satisfied are just its ephemeral echoes. We are the peace transcending motion and stillness. We are peace surpassing all peace.*
Love is the law, love under will.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
#32
*Progress in the Great Work is at first directly proportionate to the degree of untrammeled intimacy allowed between subject and object, unto union, which is the unsheathing of impersonal genius, unto naught, which is unwritten and endless potential. In this way one becomes adept at appreciating the apprehension of the increasingly subtler modalities of subjectivity. "Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us." This itinerary ensures the emancipation of the star from all bonds, that it may freely accomplish the next and by far most important stage of the Work: the administration of the True Will.
It is perhaps to be mentioned (and stressed) that the indulgence of unchecked mental reverie in symbols and speculative concepts often develops into distraction from this Great Work. Philosophical investigation should be pursued with the utmost detachment.
Know this. Knowledge is an economy of ultimately indefinable variables that exists exclusively for the convenience of the functioning of the Ruach–-called by us “reason" or “the mind”–-which is only a tool for dealing with the perception and expressions of multiplicity. However, when the ideas of this Ruach become confined in fixity by belief they are converted to ruinous rope for the sneaky snares of Choronzon, the master trapper of Egos. "Bind nothing!"
We may say that the nescient Ruach and its Kingdom mistake themselves for the Crown of Jechidah, and the Ego, which is born of grasping, results. This is normal. But beware! The advanced Adept ¹ that deliberately strives to enhance this wrong identification out of fear of loss, rather than entirely relinquishing themselves to dissolution in all through supreme love, shall in turn forfeit their link to the Crown and to the Wisdom and to the Understanding in exchange for the certain doom of complacent isolation within the self-perpetuating meaninglessness of the Abyss; their once-fecund flame feebly flitters and fizzles before fast falling flat into that vicious vacuum of vaunted vanity... They cling in vain to the false immutability of their Ego. They resist modification. They prevent expansion by refusing to pay the price of their conceited disparity. They disguise their cowardice with stale dogma, stupid segregation and stalling virtues. And they will reap the reward for their restriction in three hundred and thirty-three ways. So it is spoken. In the holy name of Babalon, so mote it be! Amen. Amen. Amen.
@tl;dr
"Every man and every woman is a star." My own words matter only in so far as the fact of their fiction is sublimated in the Peerless Silence.*Love is the law, love under will.
Footnote
- Who has surely glimpsed the way of things.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
#33
*An inestimably precious jewel resides deep within a pool.
Karma Yogis selflessly perform their duties at the pool and obtain the jewel without thinking how. Nor do they care.
Bhakti Yogis see the gem throughout the entire pool, surrender to even the sight of it, swim around with it absorbed in love, and they get it anon.
Raja Yogis repeatedly jump off the high dive until they land their mark.
Jnana Yogis become the jewel then drain the pool until no water is left.
Commercial Yoga Yogis just stand at the side of the pool and look at their own reflection in its waters and fuss over their figure, at how good they look in their bathing suits. And there they linger on and on...*
Love is the law, love under will.
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In my time I have said many stupid things. Many, many, many, many, many stupid things. I never did this out of malice, the will to malice was taken from me long ago. Good riddance. No, I said those things out of ignorance and naivete. Now, saying this does not make the things that I've said (and will probably continue to say--I'm far from perfect) go away. It can't. The only thing that I can do towards the end of rectifying my ways is to learn and to continue to learn. The heights of spiritual attainment are as nothing if they are not spent on serving others. Serving others DOES NOT MEAN imposing upon them a point of view. Self-abnegation is only worthy if the tools that once served one's self are given to the service of doing good for others. My promise is that I will continue to learn.
I said it before (#29): Coagula follows.
- Fr. seekinghga
Love is the law, love under will.
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@seekinghga said
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@seekinghga said
"However, to cross that way is to ride the camel which does the traversing for us, that our minds are not wholly purified of their covetous nature for knowledge or Da'at."What I mean by this is that we need to make the journey many times with the aid of the camel in order to familiarize ourselves with the trek. Then, when we're ready, we make the journey alone, leaving behind every bit of gear that we've accumulated and adorned ourselves with in the past so that we can cross that desert by sole virtue of our own momentum. This then is when the desert of knowledge is seen for the Abyss of Da'at. Everything but the conscious aspiration to surrender our Ego selves to the divine is a potential target in there to Choronzon, the cruel and unerring marksman. If we have sufficiently divested ourselves of any and all attachment then we die in that desert, by way of our love, and we emerge on the other side, like a sling stone, wholly at one within the essence of universal, impersonal life. Yet some, while making the expedition, fearing the seeming loss which accompanies that death, they begin feeding upon scraps that they had secreted away to sustain themselves, this "nourishment" becoming a tether as it were. (Sling stones with tethers are not very effective at hitting the far mark, are they?) These are they who weren't properly prepared or properly motivated. Dazed by the haze of this distraction they lose their direction and mistake some mirage of knowledge for the shimmer of the crown... But there's more to it than that, isn't there? The impetus of such a tendency didn't suddenly arise at just a critical moment. Giving up all that one has and all that one is is the price. You have to be sure you are ready to pay that due, and not do so begrudgingly. No haggling! LOVE is the Law, love Under will.
"From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is beyond the gold of Ophir. My God! but I love Thee! Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning? From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing. I based all on one, one on naught. Afloat in the æther, O my God, my God! O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids! Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.""
That which believes that it thinks your thoughts and performs your actions is the Ego. That is what needs to be made to cease. That is what must go. There then arises a structure or perspective which partakes of the remnants of the broken Ego yet is entirely without the taint of attachment to any of it.
Also, what I am here referring to by the term "camel" is a loose amalgamation of all of the props (
) which to this point have been gathered and used to help with the entrance into and maturation within Adepthood. These things have shielded the mind as it were from the full implication of where the path of initiation leads. The camel can be called an outward appearance of that aspect of the path, useful only until a certain stage. Really there was no camel but yourself, devoid of beliefs, partialities and identity. -
I would like to share a practice which has been very helpful to me and it is reading the Thelemic Holy Books as much as you can. Experiment with different schedules as you want to read them all fairly regularly, though the most important ones are VII, LXV, CCXX, which should be read often. For example, the chapters of Liber VII are each attributed to one of the seven planets of antiquity (Mon ch.6, Tues ch.1, Wed ch.5, Thur ch.3, Fri ch.7, Sat ch.2, Sun ch.4). A few verses of Liber AL can be read after breakfast or in your car before you go into work. Etc.
Dion Fortune gives a good term in her book "The Mystical Qabalah" that she calls "subconscious metabolization." What is important is to read the books often, even if you do not immediately comprehend their inner meaning. What happens is that the constant repetition of reading these works allows them to seep into the finer layers of the mind. This slowly, slowly, slowly, coupled with persistent and daily spiritual practice, begins to purify the mind (i.e. silence the Ruach) that the more subtle and nuanced meanings of the words of these texts are apprehended and appreciated by the unfolding of the Neschamah. One thing that I would highly advise against, unless it is prescribed by a superior in the order that you belong to, is any kind of Gematriatic interpretations or things of that nature. Think about the words, just avoid over-thinking or theorization as that pertains to the working of the Ruach.
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Here is a practice that I do.
I go to a garden store and find the sickly discounted and dying plants that are on clearance. I find the worst of the lot. I buy it and a new pot and new soil. I take it home and transplant it and water and feed it and find it a home in a window and around my other plants.
Everyday in the morning I look at the plant. I see its leaves and look into the leaves to see the veins and the finer points of the leaves. I check the soil. I turn the plant slightly so that another side is feeling the sun. I listen as I look at each part of the plant wondering what it needs and if its doing ok.
Everyday as I look and see the newness of the plant, a new stem, a new leaf a new bud I feel joy in my heart and gratitude and affection grow towards this plant. In my heart I say " yea look at you. Your so beautiful. Keep up the good work. Your doing it. "
And I turn it and water it and feed it and let it do its thing. -
@seekinghga said
"A small bit of water comes out of the water that the water may know the water. Then in ecstasy is the water poured back into the water. "The pain of division is as nothing and the joy of dissolution all." "
This draws back to what I was saying about ideas (i.e. knowledge) only being capable of possessing a meaning which is wholly dependent on their relation to similar ideas. Take for analogy a painting consisting of just the same shade of the color blue. A painting like this expresses nothing worthwhile. It is only by the adding of greens or browns (or whatever colors) for the sake of contrast that the blueness can become a "lake" or a "sky" or some other thing so as to make it intelligible to our everyday comprehension. To take this analogy past the goal post we can surmise that all color soever, each being but a partial manifestation of light, makes all appreciation of contrast solely for the benefit of limited observation. The light itself is unhindered in this requirement. Verily, for the light there is only light. However, idealization of this variety as it applies to cognizance is completely impractical in the strictest sense of worldly indication. Hence the need for a faculty with the capacity to interpret partialities and project them into a more or less coherent structure (which, of course, is liable to all of the faults of incomplete apprehension). This faculty has been fabulously coronated with the sublime and mystical, majestic sobriquet of "Mind."