Spiritual Puberty
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The "cosmic consciousness" of which he speaks is, in many and probably most cases, the same as the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel"
Hi Jim - it's interesting that you say cosmic consciousness = KCHGA.
I suffer from, for lack of a better word, "cosmophobia". I recently watched Terence Mallick's *Tree of Life *and when the film suddenly switched to full-on intense images of galaxies, Crab Nebula, and stars I had to close my eyes.
This phobia bothers me and I would like to cure myself of it, but I don't know how. I do know that I've had it for approximately 20 years. It all started in my mid-20s when I had a kundalini awakening. Part of my experience of the opening of the crown chakra was feeling a direct energetic connection to the stars. Ever since then, I have been unable to look at images of the cosmos for too long without becoming overwhelmed. Even now, if I meditate on these images I become overwhelmed by the sense of space in front of me. Possibly this is because they evoke the experience from my mid-20s for which I was not prepared. Prior to the experience, I did not have this problem - they were just images.
If you have any advice on how to cure myself of this phobia, that would be much appreciated.
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Thank you for such an informative post, Jim!
@Jim Eshelman said
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"Should this be done after one is established in his or her career, or before?"
Your antecedent is vague. Should which of these things be done &c.? In any case, the word should immediately undoes your question. There is no universal formula. There are logical and practical advantages and disadvantages to either form of the question. What i might say (and, again, this isn't to contradict the general answer at the top) is that, in throwing oneself into occultism, one shouldn't fail to get on with one's normal adult maturation and the reasonable stages of experiencing and dealing with life. "
This is so true! Whenever i hear someone is into occult - i look into their real life achievements; its the best indicator.
With this fluffy-fairy-pearls-and-roses-only commercial new age approach as of last 2 decades or so, i think many forgot that dabbling with occult is neither easy nor naive, and often is not successful either.
I remember back than that this reputable figure said that in his experience , only one in 14 people who start (any kind of ) spiritual/ magickal journey - make it, that others would be way better hadn't they started it in the first place.
(I hope he was wrong, but, sadly, to me that evaluation sounds more realistic then the pink-glasses ones.) -
@he atlas itch said
"I suffer from, for lack of a better word, "cosmophobia". I recently watched Terence Mallick's *Tree of Life *and when the film suddenly switched to full-on intense images of galaxies, Crab Nebula, and stars I had to close my eyes. "
My gut impression, in reading your post, was that this is a defensive backing away from (what probably was perceived as) a life-threatening, or ego-threatening, experience, almost in the "don't touch that hot pan on the stove again" sort of way.
The 3=8 curriculum has a practice that might be exactly right for you. It's Liber Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia.
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93,
Today's meditation text seems relevant to this phobia. (LXV 51: 1-2)
I've felt such fear at times myself, though not to the extent I'd call it a phobia. I remember being in a planetarium once when images of the creation of a supernova, or maybe the Big Bang, were being projected, and feeling terrified in the face of the power of it all. I had to lower my eyes and look at the shadowy figures around me to overcome it.
93 93/93,
Edward -
@he atlas itch said
"If you have any advice on how to cure myself of this phobia, that would be much appreciated."
@Jim Eshelman said
"My gut impression, in reading your post, was that this is a defensive backing away from (what probably was perceived as) a life-threatening, or ego-threatening, experience, almost in the "don't touch that hot pan on the stove again" sort of way."
For what it is worth, I can relate to the ego-based fear that can dominate your life after an initial, intense mystical experience. In my early twenties I had an experience, part of a sequence of events, that caused me to back away from actively seeking more of the same. At the time I was aware that I did not want to sacrifice my sense of self, at least not yet—I had some soul searching to do, I had to try and succeed in the world in the way I had always imagined I wanted to succeed.
Which is what I did. Thirty years later I finally emerged with a renewed dedication to the work that I effectively put on pause.
What I am adding is this: I'm not sure how things would have played out if I had an expert guide to help me through that time. It's also easy for me to justify the wait in terms of having had a varied and interesting life in the interim, so it's entirely possible It was too soon for me, and the experience, while giving me a glimpse of something higher, was also designed to push me back into the world.
A lot of this has to do with what stories we tell ourselves after gaining a little hindsight, but I suppose it's worth thinking about.
Love and Will
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I think that's why it's so individual. Even if the path we went down was not the most direct, it was still the inevitable choice, given the combo of who we were and the circumstances we found ourselves in.
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@Dar said
"I've never heard of this phobia or fear before. How interesting! I suppose there are lots of things where a highly emotive reaction can go either way though. It must be like theme park rides!"
I don't know who said it, but I relate to it - "Some of my 'best' trips have been 'bad' trips".
I agree that a measuring stick doesn't suffice, there are just broad strokes and patterns that can be analyzed. I think the part of the motivation of asking a question like this is to sort of analyze and find a pattern - and I personally like that game.
Significant life events probably have an effect as well. My Father died when I was 9 and for a good part of my early life that led me to believe that there had to be something else there because I felt he was still with me. That led me always to look "beyond", but I didn't get into Occult studies until my early 20's and things started to really get "serious" at the cusp of turning 30 and having gotten the basics of life in order (inasmuch as we can assume that our lives are in "order") However I don't fit the other criteria in the question of any significant attainment like K&C.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The 3=8 curriculum has a practice that might be exactly right for you. It's Liber Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia."
Thanks for that title. I read through it and it definitely addresses the themes I mentioned, although the purpose of quickly counting the thrown objects is unclear. The title is curious - Batrachos = frog, phrenobos = fear of mind?, cosmomachia = cosmo work/struggle? I'm wondering if Crowley wrote this liber in New York around the time he sacrificed the frog, to banish the Old Aeon, and subsequently had the Star-Sponge Vision? That would make sense since its included in *General Principles of Astrology *, of which some of the material was ghostwritten for Evangeline Adams around this time...
Now when I think back to my experience in my mid-20s, one of the effects of feeling a direct energetic connection to the stars was sudden intuition of the truth of astrology. I never paid much attention to astrology before. This intuition was direct and energetic-based and today, intellectually, I still cannot state why I knew it. But after the kundalini experience, I remember watching a television show with an astrologer in my energized chakras-open state, listening to him talk, and felt something weird in my crown chakra...
I have never experienced anything like that again and, even today, I am not satisfied with the explanations of astrology. I've heard explanations like when an infant draws its first breath, the position of the stars is "imprinted" into his or her awareness...
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@he atlas itch said
"I read through it and it definitely addresses the themes I mentioned, although the purpose of quickly counting the thrown objects is unclear."
It's a training in expanding the reach of the mind. That's a preliminary training that, among other things, keeps the later practice from being just a fuzzy Star Trek day dream.
"The title is curious - Batrachos = frog, phrenobos = fear of mind?, cosmomachia = cosmo work/struggle?"
That's pretty good! I'd translate it, "The Book of the Battle of the Frog, the Mind, the Roar, and the Universe."
"I'm wondering if Crowley wrote this liber in New York around the time he sacrificed the frog, to banish the Old Aeon, and subsequently had the Star-Sponge Vision?"
No, that was years later. This was originally published in Equinox 10 in 1913.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Liber Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia"
"Let the Practicus ... travel, if need be, to a land where the sun and stars are visible... ."
sigh How sad, in this age of the unveiling of the company of heaven, that the stars have been rendered nearly all invisible by artificial lighting. I wonder how many people alive today have grown up without ever knowing how we are wrapped in a milky blanket of stars.
I'm told that in the Gobi desert you can still see the night sky.
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Out in the desert near Palm Springs it's pretty amazing, too. (Just a few miles out of town.)
One of the most awesome spectacles I've ever seen was the morning of the Northridge earthquake. All power in LA went dead, and the sky was crystal clear. (It was mid-January, so the sky had been washed. Dense fog from a few hours earlier was completely gone.) The entire LA basin was exposed to an unfiltered look at the sky. (The quake occurred at 4:31 AM. Sunrise was 7:04 AM that morning.)
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@mojorisin44 said
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@Dar said
"I've never heard of this phobia or fear before. How interesting! I suppose there are lots of things where a highly emotive reaction can go either way though. It must be like theme park rides!"I don't know who said it, but I relate to it - "Some of my 'best' trips have been 'bad' trips"."
I'll go on with some personal stuff, fictitious or not. First before I read this whole thread through, I'll have to answer this. So true. Once I tried to just get a little bit of pot to help myself get away from it. But it was veeery strong, veery strong, raw, just grown. I tried to manage it, gagged, which made it much worse. I wen't to the bath-room, and... I can't speak too much of those things, because by that I come to the other point that I found interesting, which was about that cosmophobia. Just thinking about those things is quite too much. Well basically time went wacko in a new way, I became 2-D, such so on, I became very panicky, but in a while I got very ecstatic. Then I started making some questions, and got some answers that have brought me basically to where I'm now. I hadn't done any real yoga with drugs, so I tried it, I became completely ecstatic, there was basically infinite light above me, and I'll erase a bit of my rambling about this experience. After that, I meditated in a way that was normal back then, and found that oh, this is it, it's nothing unusual for me, but in normal meditation the intensity of ecstacy, the groundedness of ecstacy is nothing in comparison to that experience, although in retrospect I think that I can go and surely in a few cases have gone beyond this in my meditations. Nor did I get this kind of information, that I got out of the experience, from normal meditation. (That much for spectacles.) I'll answer to some other points after reading the whole thread through.
Edit. lessened ramblings. Okay, not much else was put in later posts. I got interested out of RAllen's thought that he needed that experience to get grounded. Now, for half a year, and from the intense stuff for over a year, I haven't let myself be in the greatest stages of consciousness that I can access, I guess I may have accessed them too soon, I guess a 3=8 type thing happened at 17 and what, 4=7 or 5=6, maybe less, maybe more, happened right before turning twentyone, which for my back-then understanding was the real age of adulthood. I had been abstaining myself off it. I've been able to be and am able to be for months in those states, practical life has always rightfully or wrongfully demanded me out of it after that, though otherwise I can remain there. Although right now I'm pretty normal, it seems as though I was looking at this normal state from the highest place I've been. That's actually weird, I've even tried to change that. Basically the greatest thing I can access seems atleast subjectively to be complete control over thoughts, where there exists nothing but bliss, the world and this life I live is an illusion.
But with that cosmic stuff, I've been recently having the same problem, one time I felt like in normal consciousness becoming one with all, that was like knives going around my body, and as clever as I am, a little after that I tried to awaken clairvoyance, got a bit too intense thing out of it, and have been after that afraid of losing my normal consciousness and entering the spiritual world.
Question: What is the normal stage of development of mankind right now? What are we speaking about in terms of time for the normal man to attain to the K&C? Dozens of thousands of years, within a thousand years, or alot more? What about Magister Templi? Millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, a few thousand years, billions of years?
Onto topic:
I became interested in the occult at 13, maybe that's a magical age? Serious study started at 17, I got results, but, or and, my physical life was very rough. I guess that first breakthrough got me loopy. Oh I wish I could get that freshness back... After that, I've been struggling with life, I guess I have attained to something, maybe not much more than usual, or then maybe alot more than usual. Of that I have no clue, I only know I don't know any as attained guy, but that's saying nothing because I only know a few dozen occultists. For a few months I've been trying to get over a bad experience, so for that time I haven't been doing much.
Uh, I'm a very shy person, this is my biggest post.
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@Dar said
"If you see anything in the initial expansion... - you might of heard of those people who see themselves in fantastic visions saying "I AM" and (****)... then you've failed because you've carted something from your mundane consciousness into the other - which means your expansion is thrown off balance by your ego...
By looking for anything - you fail to see what is really there."
Yes, but I wasn't expecting anything, in fact I wasn't expecting of getting anywhere. Then I asked a question that had been bothering myself for a long time, and got the answer that I'd been rejecting in my normal consciousness. I don't like any hippie "I am in my ass" stuff, and in my meditation I try to keep everything calm. But I'll have to admit that this time my whole head became a smile.
"Btw - whether you used drugs to aid you getting there is absolutely irrelevant to the transformational power of the experience."
Yep, I know. It was basically like playing with a toy. Also, what I think as something great, maybe K&C, I can go there whenever I want, like right now at the blink of an eye, but it's too overwhelming, I guess my life situation doesn't afford it, because the way I think becomes so different. It seems like everything I wish in my normal consciousness is completely absurd.
Getting to the highest peak needs around a week of work, but I know I can get there. I think I can get there in a couple of days, but doing it more peacefully is a more sure way. What this highest peak is, I do not know. I guess last time I was there was a year ago.
There should be a manual where it is said when you're ready for whatever. I don't like the ego trap, but nor do I like the trap of depression, which doesn't vanish in higher states, only becomes different, sometimes alot more weird. And the funniest part is that I don't know if it is better to be mundane or meditative, because in each way I feel like there's no way out of my situation, although it's different, like looking into two different situations, both as hopeless. I guess it's about that neptunian thing of getting into situations (confinement-like....), from where it's hard to get out. I guess that's what's the most pronounced thing in me right now.
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@Dar said
"Ooooh yeah. I can really relate to that big stylie. Accepting love, corrects the balance and shoots you out the hatch from the weird room, but it's hard to accept! All my early childhood rearing makes me suspicious, and backwards about coming fowards to believe I am loved. I am loved my by angel, but I am human and need human love and intimacy as well to feel like a whole human being. Right now - I get little of that - although coming back from my grandparents today it feels like they've balanced me up a little and given their starving granddaughter soul food. I was supposed to be looking after them but it went two ways.
"Accepting love. There have come very great people to my life, but I have rejected them all. It's also very hard because I can't really get anywhere where I meet people. I'm so shy.
" I am loved my by angel, but I am human and need human love and intimacy as well to feel like a whole human being."
Very true. Even the highest ecstacy seems weird, if I can't get the normal stuff. It's like, I can control the weather, but all I'm doing is surfing the internet, whereas a potatohead is there doing some construction work. So who is the loser?
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Well, actually, I have this kind of hypnotic personality, but I'm so shy that I don't go anywhere. I don't even like to be with friends, although they like me. My base is in a place where everyone was supposed to like me, but something else happened. I was as a child very outgoing, though shy or sensitive too, but from bullying I became very depressed and the latent shyness became very pronounced. I can't even work. I really think that I would need a manual for my life. I don't mind depression, but it's hard that I can't do anything. Nobody cares either way about K&C of the HGA or samadhi - they care and see your state of being and wisdom through whether you are working.
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@Dar said
"I wrote this a couple of weeks ago.... I just figure you might like it right now...
Supra Rational Processes of the Unconscious.
16 St. Johns Street.
Picture a guy, just 18 and arriving at Trinity Collage, Cambridge University. He appears to be a charming fellow, perhaps a little naïve but liable to take one off guard with this curious attitude he has that makes you feels as if you never quite get the measure of the chap. You don’t often see people like that, and they’re fascinating to think about. They get a lot of attention that they don’t appear to invite, and even to resent - those chaps. You know what sort of chap I’m talking about… the ‘interesting’ ones. Like Aleister Crowley.
Like Vlad.
"You make me blush (not really, but that's because I don't blush). Vanishes out of sight
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"There should be a manual where it is said when you're ready for whatever. I don't like the ego trap, but nor do I like the trap of depression, which doesn't vanish in higher states, only becomes different, sometimes alot more weird. And the funniest part is that I don't know if it is better to be mundane or meditative"
So true. There definitely needs to be a manual.
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@gmugmble said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Liber Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia""Let the Practicus ... travel, if need be, to a land where the sun and stars are visible... ."
sigh How sad, in this age of the unveiling of the company of heaven, that the stars have been rendered nearly all invisible by artificial lighting. I wonder how many people alive today have grown up without ever knowing how we are wrapped in a milky blanket of stars.
I'm told that in the Gobi desert you can still see the night sky."
Now sailing off the coast of Portugal for a month, can see the Milky Way at night... its awe inspiring.