The Great Work - How do you define and live it?
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Froclown. Perhaps you are familiar with the semanticist Alfred Korzybski? He was famous for stating, "the map is not the territory". The mental map you project on your sliver of territory does not come close to replicating the depth and complexity of Deep Reality. Your analogy is good should not be limited to how you wish to apply it literally. I'm not one to argue, but I'm wondering if it's possible you can STOP with your banter, sit back and ask yourself, "Is my view of the situation incomplete? Are there perhaps others who have taken in a greater field of view?" Consider that. You're gunning to perfect the art of mundane thought, but a mind all logic is like a knife all blade. You're severely limited the potential experiences you could incur but making absolute declarative "being" statements, as if your finite mind has grasped the infinite. That's all I have for you.
To answer my own question, I have found that the Great Work is something I meditate on daily. (I even programming my cell phone to message me everyday at the same time "Are you practicing The Great Work!?"
) Not only meditate but practice of course. And in the course of my practice I began to experiment with just how far one can take it when it comes to direct involvement in the advancement of humanity. When I was attending a private College in the NW, I did an experiment where through various rituals I would draw down a lot of energy and project it in form over a the small town where the college was located. The purpose and quality of this energy was intended to essentially tickle the collective kundalini of students on campus. I will be brief in details for the sake of getting on with it, but I should say I kept notes of specific events I worked to create which manifested themselves in exactitude with my intentions. It was my first experiment at directly/indirectly affecting a collective for the purpose of seeing if it were possible, and without a doubt it was. The college became immersed in what everyone began referring to as "an outpouring of the Holy Spirit." Students said that the gift of prophecy had shown itself on campus. Kids spoke in tongues. A few kids even had their kundalini fully rise in my presence. There was a thematic dream that made the rounds as well, which was very specific and occurred with random individuals. The dream consisted of a man walking into a room w/ red light emitting from his mouth and eyes. People would begin to feel an electrical charge rising up to their heart causing them to awake with nervous anxiety. This was a very reserved christian university that is at the extreme opposite of the pentecostal movement, which makes it even more intriguing.This lasted for the amount of time I spent every day in meditation drawing down the energy and projecting it in geometric formation over the town, and it ended when I ended my practice. It was like water had been thrown on the fire and there was a lull and sense of depression, as if to ask "what happened? Where did it go?" In retrospect, it was naive of me to do what I did, but It was a learning experience that taught me some things about projecting my will in places it has not been formally invited.
Anyway, I am sharing that because there has been nonsense tossed around about how it's ONLY possible to do the great work by direct physical interaction. Nothing against that, we need shovelers, just as much as we need hidden architects.
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What you claim here is that you imagined some nonsense, then you in a most uncontrolled and unscientific way claimed that you nonsense caused some other nonsense, and then smugly congratulate yourself for having imaginary powers than have imaginary effects.
Yes and one time I concentrated really hard on a black diamond of construction paper and it filled up with so much "energy" than my friend who is a self proclaimed psychic, after I told he about it, she said, Wow, like I could feel that energy in all the way at my house. Then when she touched the paper, it discharged so much "energy" than she gasped and said it produced an aura of bliss in her.
That proves I have really strong "Powers"
EEEERRRR
That's all bullshit! -
I don't know where you get the idea that all these weird powers and other planes of existence and such are necessary for Thelema.
Captain Fuller in his book "A star in the West" wrote allot on the merits of Crowley's Philosophy and did not include any such nonsense. He called it Phyrro-Zoroastrianism.
Crowely himself though often indicating that he had leaning towards supernatural explanations almost always included the rational materialist alternative perspective as well. The effects of magick and described as potentially effects on the mind, he explains than past life experiences could very well be dreams that express some unconscious aspect of the personality and not really indicate reincarnation at all, and the entire Gnostic mass was written from a purely scientific materialist perspective.
In all his life and experience, Crowley himself could not come to a final conclusion about if his experiences were indication of supernatural worlds and effects or materialist brain activity. If Crowley could not conclusively prove to himself that these hypotheses are true, then why would we want to waste time considering such hypotheses, which are generally vague, ill defined and at any rate unfalsifiable, rather than to discover the True material cause for our experiences.
There was a tribe that made women put nails in their apples because of the story of adam and eve and the nails represent christ. The women who nailed the apples were ok, those who stopped got really sick, so they said this proves the curse of eve is true. Well it turns out the women there had low iron diets and the nails seeped iron into the apples, thus the women who didn't eat the apple got anaemic. So you see their was a real physical cause, hidden behind the superstitious beliefs.
My postulate is that there is ALWAYS a physical material cause to everything, and superstition only hides than truth.
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When referencing Crowley for your materialistic POV (which you are free to do), I hope you recall that when he wrote "The Initiated Interpretation of Magick" (as found in Matther's translation of The Goetia), he was just barely a boy and when he wrote The Vistion & The Voice, he was a full Magister. There you will know the difference.
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You mean that his views seemed to have changed after years of cocaine and hashish use, which are known to cause cognitive changes that make people less strictly rational, subject to mania and paranoia, and less critical of their subjective perceptions and more willing to accept impressions at how things seem in place of scientifically verified facts?
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Life offers many opportunities to see from different sides of the fence at different points in our life.
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I already said, if you can show me your procedures and methodology, and let me review your data, show that your performed controlled experiments with verifiable results.
I will be more than happy to repeat your experiment myself, I have been trained in such methods, so I know how to get state board authorisation and will gather a good test sample. I may even be able to get funding. I will test it out in the controlled lab, and see if we get any results than statistically deny the null hypothesis.
If I find conclusive proof that there are such non-material things, I will be glad to put your name on my study. Since so far in hundreds of years of science no one has done such a thing, we may even win a nobel prize.
But if all anyone can give me are anecdotal stories about things that don't even relate to anything sensible. "I imagined a blue light covered a whole city of people and later I heard that some of them reported feeling spiritual" I will take that as nonsense, not as proof of anything.
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You're interesting to watch, in a certain light. The extremism is obviously serving as a compensatory mechanism to protect you from a Huge Scary Multiverse filled with all manner of unexplainable phenomena. Good luck overcoming your fears.
Anyway, It is obvious you are a waste of time to
as when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases and so i think you've had your say and the respectful thing to do would be to start a separate thread where you can bash our brief statements and let those of us happily carry on who don't want to waste our time arguing.In conlusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.
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I would like to link to some one who it seems took it upon themselves to write in my defence.
And this other really amazing essay, which is written in a much more academic style than my tendency to polemic, but expresses all the same ideas that I try to convey.
helema-and-skepticism.blogspot.com/2011/06/introduction.html
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@Froclown said
"But if all anyone can give me are anecdotal stories about things that don't even relate to anything sensible. "I imagined a blue light covered a whole city of people and later I heard that some of them reported feeling spiritual" I will take that as nonsense, not as proof of anything."
We missed you, thou gadfly of Thelema. This forum was getting somewhat boring as of late.
Might I remind you: "There is a factor infinite and unknown."
I understand what you're saying; no claim to experiential phenomena should be made without being tested, tried, and assimilated to the corpus of existing data. But at the same time, to hold as a premise that a thing cannot exist unless it is verifiable by human experience is a fallacy. "Man is not the measure of all things."
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look my whole point was this.
The great work is not a feeling, it's not a spiritual sense, it's not mystical ascension, it is not doing yoga and feeling at peace with the world.
The great work is "establishing the kingdom of God on earth". If developing your "spiritual sense" is beneficial to you taking practical measure then so be it. But if all you are doing is warping your mind with practices than teach you to accept confirmation biases and delve into solipsism and convince you that you have powers to make the world a better place just by "raising positive energy bubbles" while the mis-management of the economic system causing a crash that will lead to all businesses shutting down, oil consumption and dependence will kill us all when it runs out, The media is driven to propagate poor mental habits and behaviours to brain wash us into needing unnecessary things, society is declining rapidly to self destruction, many factors are leading people to depression and anxiety that are medicated rather than treated at the source, people are driven by taught entitlement mentality that leads to criminal behaviour as well as feelings of inferiority, leaders are not trusted or trust worthy leading to cries against all authority and civil order that breaks down into anarchy and crime, and to preserve the unsustainable global industrial network the whole world in sunk into one war after another.
The cause of all of this can be traced to a lack of belief in higher values and the disrespect of individuals who possess those higher virtues, in place of them avarice, the mere attainment of wealth for wealth sake and the fanatical devotion to spoiled pop stars and poor black rap stars (Both indoctrinated with extreme cases of slave mentality that they are entitled by birth to be equal no matter what, and the resentment of those who have achieved more, leading to a victim mentality in the black community and to apathy and degenerate behaviour in the rich) There are no higher values presented, the rich don't know what to use their money for, and the poor don't have any other sense of value in loo of wealth. The values of the Christian churches support the victim hood and entitlement mentality, the liberal politics encourage this mentality by their left hand so they can come in and play the saviour with the left hand and pander votes from the minority and working class.
These are only a few of the MANY problems that are the result of following out the Old Aeon Formula, which the right application of the Law of Thelema, as it is presented in "The method of Thelema" as the "Law of fitness" would solve or improve greatly.
But the means of applying the law, is not to produce feelings in yourself, or to imagine that you are transmitting love and happiness in an aura to the world. You have to ACTUALLY and Physically change the policies, the logistics of businesses and companies, the mentality of the people, the structure of cities, the goals of the nations and the companies.
That means Promoting Thelema to the people, establishing it in small communities to test it out and improve it's application, to design company logistics that conform to Thelema. To put the values out in the media and to actively work against the messages of Democracy and Equality, and all that promote victimhood, slave morals, entitlement, etc. To promote Aristocracy.
Not to pray over a sigil, and imagine a blue light warming the hearts of the world, then looking at pictures of kittens with a warm feeling of self congratulations of how much "Spiritual work" you have done to serve humanity.
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Funny thing Froclown is that I know no one personally whom fits that description. Everyone I know involved in the Great Work completely agrees with your call to practicality. Not that I don't know fluffy wannabe butterflys out there, but none of them call it The Great Work.
What those of us whom I know know is that in order to change the world (similar as you describe it) we must also (and first) change ourselves. Not exactly in the fluffy white lighter mentality that you demonize in your life, but in the wisdom that without a certain level of empathy and understanding and basic relationship skills, this "fight for what is right" will only make you sound and look like a "gadfly" jackass - someone no one is going to listen too.
So... as has been told you many different ways in many different topics and with as many examples as I can imagine, you need to balance the micro with the macro a little more. Yes, you specifically, need to open yourself more than you've shown yourself to have at this point.
Yours in lucks
- Takamba
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@Takamba said
"Funny thing Froclown is that I know no one personally whom fits that description. Everyone I know involved in the Great Work completely agrees with your call to practicality. Not that I don't know fluffy wannabe butterflys out there, but none of them call it The Great Work.
What those of us whom I know know is that in order to change the world (similar as you describe it) we must also (and first) change ourselves. Not exactly in the fluffy white lighter mentality that you demonize in your life, but in the wisdom that without a certain level of empathy and understanding and basic relationship skills, this "fight for what is right" will only make you sound and look like a "gadfly" jackass - someone no one is going to listen too.
So... as has been told you many different ways in many different topics and with as many examples as I can imagine, you need to balance the micro with the macro a little more. Yes, you specifically, need to open yourself more than you've shown yourself to have at this point.
Yours in lucks
- Takamba"
I agree, you should be preaching to the Wiccans, everyone (almost) that I know, who is doing the great work realises that the problems facing the world are extremely complex and will not be helped by wishing they would go away.
Personally I don't hold the slightest regard or interest for so called "results magic", which usually has no results worth mentioning; and I find it a tad annoying that I should be lumped in with the crystal waving feel good crowd.I am above all a pragmatist.
If you wish into your right hand and shit into your left hand, which one is going to fill up fastest?
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@Froclown said
"That means Promoting Thelema to the people, establishing it in small communities to test it out and improve it's application, to design company logistics that conform to Thelema. To put the values out in the media and to actively work against the messages of Democracy and Equality, and all that promote victimhood, slave morals, entitlement, etc. To promote Aristocracy.
Not to pray over a sigil, and imagine a blue light warming the hearts of the world, then looking at pictures of kittens with a warm feeling of self congratulations of how much "Spiritual work" you have done to serve humanity."
Froclown, I largely agree with much of your post. If we don't bring something into the world of Assiah, it seems somehow incomplete. I'm sure there are lots of ways to fool ourselves into sitting on our thumbs.
However, there is one key place that you lose me:
When you take your personal ideals of what needs changing, and assume that those are the universal changes we need to make. I neither know nor care what your will is. It's like a musician in an orchestra who imagines that their instrument and notes are the only ones that should be played. In a properly functioning orchestra, sometimes there's harmony, sometimes there's dissonance. Sometimes notes compete, sometimes they blend or play in unison. Sometimes they have to observe rests.
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if we don't make those changes I listed, every last human being on earth will die.
There is no other world no souls, if we all die that's it, game over the end.
No one can do their own WILL until the WHOLE system is re-designed into a general thelemic order. it is only within the Community of Thelemites that the conditions are created where any individual can be fully engaged in their own Will.
All the parts of the Mandala can only serve their purpose in the structure of the Mandala as a whole.
"No two rings link, but all 5 do."
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@Froclown said
"if we don't make those changes I listed, every last human being on earth will die."
That's going to happen no matter what we do. It's just the order and timing of it that can change.
However, in terms of lists of items that exist materially, I would point out that the future is not one of them.
"No one can do their own WILL until the WHOLE system is re-designed into a general thelemic order. it is only within the Community of Thelemites that the conditions are created where any individual can be fully engaged in their own Will."
And here I think you've uncovered a point of INESTIMABLE value.
*Your brain has told you a lie that helps delay your personal Great Work. *
That the GW cannot be completed until an unrealistic goal is accomplished. Consider how the ruach benefits from this, since it can delay something that will, on a certain level, mean its own death.
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What' seems so clear to my mind and some others commenting on this thread as I understand them is this:
The hope of the Thelemic ascendency is the result of people discovering and prosecuting their true wills.
What it isn't is an abstract idea that x, y, and z has to happen, and that that will be more or less the same, as if people had discovered their true wills. You cannot substitute this prerequisite with an idealized vision of what it would mean if people were to do this—it's not the same thing.
That doesn't stop this notion of ours from being an ideal, but no one really knows what the fulfillment of this ideal will entail. I mean you don't even have to call this ideal Thelema! It is what it is no mater how it comes about.
And to the degree that people have to do this on their own, there is no public policy that can ever be mandated, unless it is someones true will to make it so! In which case they will not need to be talked into doing anything via an argument. Oh, and they will succeed!
Love and Will
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To understand how to organise a community so than every member is able to perform their essential function without being bossed around and compelled to work against their interests. It is helpful to combine the principles of Skinner's walden two. with the science of permaculture farming and the relation of the cell to the body.
A single cell alone, can not perform it's function. The cell does not appear out of the void, it is shaped by the whole body to serve a particular function in the body as a whole, alone the cell has no function, at that point it's WILL is to insert itself into a place in an organism where it can fulfil it's function.
The same is true for a heart or a liver, it has no purpose alone, it has to be supported by the action of the other organs and it's function contributes to the other organs. When you take the heart out of the body, it dies. It can beats but without purpose, away from the lungs and nervous system and disconnected from the arteries, it can only wither up.
In fact it is the very activity of the other organs and the forces that act upon the organ as well as the forces it is capable of exerting that define it's function, it's True WILL.
Thus if we have a organs and no body, we need to have some one with the wisdom to discern the properties, the needs and abilities of each organ, so that we can discern how to arrange them into a whole body where each WILL supports the Will of the others. Thus figuring out how no fit oneself into a greater whole, is vital to every individual true Will.