Qlippoth of Yesod (or Nephesh)
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Danica used the term "Qlippoth of Nephesh" in a post for today's daily meditation, and the term intrigues me greatly... mainly because I am struggling passionately with Nephesh right now, and mine is definitely unbalanced and always has been.
How might one handle such a force within oneself? How does one go about balancing that?
93, 93/93.
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ahh, the old Nephesh problem; thats one I know well.
For what is's worth here is the way I would deal with it: devote yourself utterly to Babalon/Nuit.
remember that there is a curious relationship between Malkuth and Binah, if an aspirent neglects Binah, then she sends a Siren to destroy the aspirent, what this means in practical terms is that when your aspiration falls from the higher to the lower then the lower has power over you, when you should have power over it.Get yourself soem sort of image of your true aspiration; I did this by aquireing a pendant with the Star of Babalon, I never take it off except to shower, and not always then.
check out Liber legis I:51-52
Devote all actions, feelings, desires, lust, or whatever, to Babalon.
This is one hell of a stumbling block, beleive me, I know it.
Good luck93 93/93
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My current point-of-view is that one must slowly and carefully progress to a marriage between your nephesh and your ruach, your conscious and unconscious. When you start of with adversarial, damaged sides, the first thing to do is separate the two fighters, and make sure that one can't hurt the other.
Then, make sure to start including and addressing the needs of both. Make time for work and play to take brief turns if needed every month, every week, every day. Don't let conscious will (with a lower-case "w") block out play, and don't let play get repressed until it dominates in destructive ways.
Eventually, begin to marry elements of one to the other. Bring rules and order and discipline to your play time. Bring passion and drive and creativity to your work time. Work towards a marriage of the two, where you can bring your full range of conscious and unconscious potential to tackle your current goal of work/play.
It's easy to mistake ruach goals for the sum total of true will. But, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
And, every phase of consciousness that you go through is important/inevitable/useful to the moment. I suppose that even includes the phase of beating yourself up for 'mistaken' phases of consciousness.
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Just that from what I can see, when the two sides are especially at odd and dysfunctional in their opposition, that we tend to be more destructive, conflicted, and unable to 'make progress'. And that it's easy, when one side gets momentary control, for it to do some pretty unkind things to the other side.
For example, maybe the damaged Nephesh gets in control and runs around like an overgrown troubled child - drinking way too much, or engaging in dangerous behavior or some such potentially useful, but only if you include the lessons of the school of hard knocks to be a nice route to go down in this incarnation.
Or the smug Ruach gets in control, and pretty much locks the Nephesh in the closet, and makes sure that you eat no cookies and ice cream, live a very controlled, rational lifestyle and don't allow yourself to express an emotion. But perhaps inside there is turmoil and emptiness, an inability to connect with anything meaningful. And the Nephesh becomes stunted or pathological.
There are so many ways to make ourselves unhappy. The first step seems to be taking away the weapons, and calling a truce.
(Example: No, Nephesh, you may not inject needle drugs just because you're bored and upset. Instead, you may take a day off and go to the movies. Yes, you can read a book, or do an art project this weekend.
Yes, Ruach, we do need to bring some organization to this situation. But lets not insult Nephesh, and lets not forget to include some of Nephesh's needs in this schedule. Offer to help Nephesh do some research for his art project if you're afraid of just sitting around.)
When things are damaged, this is what therapy is for. If people get especially damaged, sometimes you don't even want to start to open up that level of minimal communication. Suicide watch would be an extreme example of having to play referee between a person's two sides.
So you can see there's a trend. Health = harmony between these various factors of our selves. Disease = destructive conflict between these factors. You can picture the progression, as one gets healthier, the communication between these sides become more functional, and friendly. Cooperation builds. Unity of effort is more attainable. Internal conflict is slowly dissolved.