The new Aeon
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@Edward Mason said
"You're trying to pin something down."
Somewhere in his autobiography In My Own Way, Alan Watts tells that his father (or grandfather?) used to collect butterflies. The butterflies pinned to their displays were beautiful -- but they were dead. Watts found that you can sit perfectly still in a field and the butterflies will come to you and you can observe them in their living state.
Trying to grasp answers to deep questions with the intellect is like pinning butterflies to a display. With a great deal of effort and cunning, you can do it, and the result may be delightful -- but it will be dead. The trick is to sit perfectly still and let the answer you seek come to you. Then you can see it as it truly is, though you won't "possess" it, and it will flit away after a while.
There is a story (I don't remember where I read this) of a Roman Catholic priest living in a Middle Eastern country. He was in his room meditating when he heard from far off the voice of the muezzin calling Moslems to prayer. When the priest directed his attention to the voice to listen to it, it disappeared. It was too faint to be heard over the noise of the streets. But when he returned to his meditation, the sound of the voice returned.
It's like that sometimes -- the effort to find the answer chases it away.
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Wonderful metaphor. (Watts was fantastic for that sort of thing. Way back when, he was the one who finally got me to understand Tao.)
I remember Case (speaking in 1930s era technology terms) remarking that scientists hadn't found consciousness yet because you can only dissect a dead brain.
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Thanks Ultimate. I love the story. Actually, that's how I come up with most of my ideas; by asking for help in understanding and listening quietly. Maybe an idea would come, or something from an outside source would show up etc. Over the course of many years I gradually began to find some answers to things that I always wanted to know about. Then it got to a point where I new that I was done with that phase, for the most part, and that I was ready to begin working on direct experience. Around that time, Thelema started making a big appearance in my life, through friends that I met etc. While I do know that grasping these concepts intellectually is not the main goal, it still makes sense to have a working understanding of the concepts and symbols, I think. I'm not particularly fond of systems that believe that our main goal is to get out of here and to go to a heaven, or nirvana forever and never return, or various other beliefs that may not involve getting out of here per say, but promote the idea that we just wake up one day and we realize the truth and we go on from there being awake forever after and yada, yada, yada. Not that that might not be nice, don't get me wrong, but I just don't buy it. That's like saying that the penis only goes in one direction, inwards. Well that doesn't make for good sex now does it? Where's the in AND out? Where's the "as above, so below"? Where's the inhale breath? Where's the other half of the current? Not only that, but say that the forever involuting idea is correct; why only wake up to that realization now, assuming that there has already been an infinite past and an infinite future lies ahead. Christians would say something like, "Well it's simple as pie, you are a finite being that was only created a little while ago by the creator god and your just now growing up enough. Now be good and you go to heaven and never come back here." Ok, so that means that there are two separate things, the finite being and the creator god. Now we're back to duality and we just drew an imaginary line in the sand and deluded ourselves into thinking that the All can really be divided. On the other hand, if my true, inner nature is infinite, then it must have been covered up and now it reemerges from within me. Even if I go on from there, through many lifetimes, and never fall asleep again, it doesn't explain why I haven't **always **been awake, unless there are many smaller life/death/rebirth events that form an evolution which leads to a point of being able to wake up and remain awake. But those subsets of reincarnation events must fit into a larger cycle of life/death/rebirth; the death phase of which would be the beginning of the smaller subset of reincarnations which leads to the eventual reawakening. In that case, I don't think it is that stupid to liken the larger, overall picture to a life, death, rebirth, formula. Anyway, I'm not trying to get you started again Jim, if your hovering around out there. Like I said, I respect your position and I understand what you are saying about going ahead with practices and deepening spiritual experience.
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Something from a high-school physics class:
Imagine a spinning disk with a peg near the edge, sticking out perpendicular to the surface of the circle. It describes a circle on the edge of the disk like a kid on a merry-go-round.
Now imagine that you shift your perspective so that you are looking at the profile of the circle. Now the peg appears to be bobbing up-and-down: effectively two opposite directions.
But from face on, we see that it's just one continuous motion.
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"Something from a high-school physics class:
Imagine a spinning disk with a peg near the edge, sticking out perpendicular to the surface of the circle. It describes a circle on the edge of the disk like a kid on a merry-go-round.
Now imagine that you shift your perspective so that you are looking at the profile of the circle. Now the peg appears to be bobbing up-and-down: effectively two opposite directions.
But from face on, we see that it's just one continuous motion."
I am 100% with you on that!! That's a great analogy. Now the thing is, why didn't I always see it from face on, and know the truth, that it is just one continuous motion? The issue is not that it hasn't always been a continuous motion, it's that I awaken to this truth. Bringing the analogy back to the discussion at hand, I reawaken to my true nature. There is no ever changing, and ever evolving of any sort. There is just the reawakening to what has always been the case. If I have reawakened, I must have fallen asleep, or gone through a death phase. Not that the death is true, or real, but this phase made death appear to be true. When the reawakening is complete, then there is no longer any appearance of division. You know yourself again. You know that you are the creator. So, the whole journey from the awareness and experience of the Self as God, to the covering up of this truth, and to it's reemergence, is a death and rebirth cycle.
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And I think understanding this would come in handy further down the road.
"To attain the Grade of Magister Templi, he must perform two tasks; (the first is) the emancipation from thought by putting each idea against it's opposite, and refusing to prefer either..." One Star in Sight
By understanding this plan, one neither prefers truth over illusion, or giving over receiving. Illusion is our mother, that hides truth and births it once again. She is finite. She takes truth in making it possible for it to grow and reemerge and be born again. If she were infinite, we would never know truth. Neither do we prefer life over death since in death we prepare the way to receive life.
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"AvshalomBinyamin wrote:
Dar wrote:
AvshalomBinyamin wrote:
(Not at you--responding to Jim's post with a similar sentiment to yours)
I'll have to agree with you guys on that one; That was one of the most lucid explanations I have come across in years.
Many thanks Jim."
XX
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"when I ask myself if I am behind the concepts of The Book of The Law, or Thelema in general, I have to understand what those concepts are in order to answer that. And though I feel that it resonates with me a great deal, and I am very much in harmony with the ideas presented, I am, to the greatest degree, basing that on what I "think" I understand about what it is trying to say (aren't we all?)"
how i answer that for myself is, i state that to this point this makes sense (whatever it is, thelema, the book of the law, etc...). if i am not grasping a concept, i just consider that fact and more often than not, i become clear for myself. it will. beyond thinking, maybe look at your life as it is. can you find your place contextually among "the law"? harmony and resonation are great markers! where i find sparks, i explore! it's not about understanding the words but more the life it breathes within us.
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I was not off topic, I explained how we are to know what the concepts of the new aeon are, and what the basic idea is and how we are to apply those to our own lives.
That is what the poster was wanting to know. That is what I explained, also I didn't paste any quotes from anything.
I see several posts here that are off topic, and not deleted or warned. My post was very much on topic.
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@Froclown said
"I was not off topic, I explained how we are to know what the concepts of the new aeon are, and what the basic idea is and how we are to apply those to our own lives. "
The inquiry was about the aeons. You didn't make any reference at all to the aeons in your answer. You went off on a digressive diatribe.
"I see several posts here that are off topic, and not deleted or warned. My post was very much on topic."
I don't want to turn this thread into a separate side-discussion on your behavior and your posts, but (following my own rules) I'm recognizing that a conversation sometimes requires a brief digression in order to get back on track. I also recognize that you deserve an answer; so I'll answer your post and then let the thread return to its original topic.
To answer your sentence quoted immediately above: While occasional off-topic digressions are single-post remarks, or allow for a brief detour or side-issue (of a few posts), your posts have a demonstrated history of starting complete divergences from the original subject matter. I've historically allowed this when your initial post at least had the appearance of addressing the topic of the thread (that's us liberals for you - giving you rights even when we pragmatically know that it will be a bad outcome, because we simply believe in giving people rights). But in the present instance, your post didn't even address the original topic.
I will make further statements in an open letter to you in the General Discussion section.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@kerlem93 said
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"3rd graders are taught that the sun "setting" is really the earth revolving, and that the seasons are from the tilt of the earth. They don't really partake of the "mystery" of the dying sunlight every night, or during the winter solstice, because it's not a mystery anymore."True, but how did we get in a position where we are reascending the tree unless we are going through a rebirth process right now due to a previous death phase?"
This might be a way for me to address the idea you asked me to elucidate. I'll try to do it quickly, and see where that gets us.
Here's the thing: "We" aren't ascending the Tree. Or, at least, it depends on what you mean by "we."
You have been using the traditional involution/evolution cyclical language. It's a really useful metaphor - I used it for years, and still might get caught dragging it out. But I now think it is flawed in the sense that a fairy tale is flawed, even if it extends a useful concept to us.
The involution/evolution idea is (more or less) that we descended into matter, and now we are turning around and heading back up the way we came, back to source.
I offer a different picture; but to understand it, you have to understand that what you truly are isn't the "you" that is doing the ascending. Rather, it's what that particular "you" calls (various things such as) The Light.
That's what you are.
OK, simple picture - I'm using far too many words, but it's a simple picture:
Imagine (to pick a term) the Light (Spirit, God, whatever) existing in the absence of formation or matter. The act of creation is one of stepping the infinite down a few planes to give first creation to physical substance - let's use a rock for our example.
Over millennia, the created circumstances cause this rock to undergo changes - to structurally change - to become some organic structure capable of first sustaining life. As soon as it becomes capable of this, Life flows in. And Life (being the Light), as it flows in, gains even more power to effect changes. Over further millennia, the structure of the living thing evolves, changes - one Life continues to flow through it, passing from generation to generation, as it evolves the structure of the living thing, continually improving the genetic patterns for the specific purpose of enabling greater and greater amounts of Light/Life to inhabit the reproduced structures.
This is all one continuous process of the Light endeavoring to pour itself into Assiah so as to create substance, and pour itself into the substance to vivify it - all with the goal, perhaps, of being One Thing existing "concurrently" on all planes.
In time, this process evolves into humanity, and it keeps on procreating in a way that results in more and more Light/Life incarnating in each generation of the biological structures.
In time, there are humans who are filled with sufficient Light/Life that they develop consciousness that can act as if it is making intentional decisions about participating in this continuous flooding of Light/Life into Assiah. That is, though simply constructs, these self-conscious human animals begin to execute programs that involve them in steps that increase the amount of Light and Life that can flow into them.
At this point, they look like (and experience themselves as) people involved in spiritual growth. But it's really just a more sophisticated version of the process whereby a rock was impacted the spirtual force of which it was already composed so that it structurally changed.
These self-conscious human animals mistake their behavior patterns for a personality, and for evidence that they exist as autonomous beings. In time, some of them undertake steps (or are naturally impacted) such that they become significant receptacles of so much Light that the Light itself becomes self-conscious in them.\
It looks like they were already "people" and that they had undertaken an evolutionary "path of return." But really, it has never stopped being involutionary. The Light is just managing to incarnate itself more thoroughly at each step.
The mechanism of personality that thinks it is a person experiences the influx of Light as something outside itself, with which to join. In fact, it is the same thing of which that 'person' is already composed. In fact, it is what they most truly are. And, as the bend is rounded and Adepthood is stabilized and matures, it is no longer a person who sees that the Angel (or whatever metaphor you prefer) is filling him or her; rather, one recognizes (probably unconsciously at first, the long-known idea taking its time to become a conscious thought) that one has always been the Angel endeavoring to deepen and further one's incarnation and insinuate ever more of oneself into incarnation.
One is ever-borning. There is no return. The process of creating a thing on ever deepening planes, and of inhabiting it ever more, is not two processes, but one - as most artists will tell you: What you make has always been yourself.
As I said - a lot of words - but the concept is simple. It's all one continuous and continuing process."
A quick point about this, more than to disagree, to make a “distinction”, considering that I don´t necessary disagree with what you said, and that I didn´t read the entire discussion, so I can have missed something:
The thing I see with that sort of evolutionary idea of “Light” with human being, is that I find it similar to the actual speciesist dogma that doesn’t deny the animality of human, but the contrary: makes it an absolut predator with a sort of natural right (like a divine right given by God) to make use of other animals to any cost, ethical, ecologic or economic.
I find that in his major part, the general idea of “evolution” like a sort of contest is a fallacy: the human being is so “evolved” like a dumb kitchen, a fly or a manatee. I don’t have the need to “evolve”, evolve why? Evolving is for bonobos and inferior beings, not for me.
Well that´s my point..
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OK. Understood.
My point is quite the obvious: What we're doing here (in this forum, and in the broader context of this work) is specifically evolution. (Aside from the fact that evolution is going on constantly, and not only between generations.) From my p.o.v., if you aren't interested in evolution - if you're completely happy with your current level - then what's the point of pursuing the Great Work?
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I´d make a distinction again: I find evolution is a cultural construct for the most part, hence the "need" for evolution as a conscious and active interest, the same. I obviously am not free of cultural garbage (I was joking earlier about the superior being, eh), so of course I have my need to evolve, or whatever. The Great Work on the other hand, I think encompasses a number of other concepts that go beyond evolution, much broader concepts, complex and ambiguous in many cases, that one can hardly grasp but in an almost intuitive way.
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I persist in using the word "evolution" because I think the real dynamic of the Great Work is the making of literal genetic changes - probably (based on current knowledge) by RNA switching - which unlocks from an individual's DNA potentials that won't be realized by the species as a whole for thousands (or tens of thousands) of years. That's evolution in the purest sense.
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Well, evolution in that sense, yes. What I mean is that this potential does not make the human specie a special being, more evolved or whatever. Apart, what has led to humans to our "splendor" it has also meant our misery, and I find the very idea of "having to evolve", to a superior Counciousness, Truth, or whatever, a bit stained in conflict with this fact of human culture and civilization. I think it´s probably sure, that if we lived in a completely different culture, perhaps not so sick, our aspirations would be anothers very differents. Perhaps in fact the simple idea of "having to evolve" refers to a deep desire, nostalgia or something for wanting to improve or trascend this culture.. Just wondering, I can only speak for myself, but I think that they are things that can not be taked separatelly.
On the other side, changing the DNA in a few generations is possible and common in specific cases, I have understood, whether "artificial" or naturally. Artificially there´s cases of wild foxes, who, after some twenty generations of breeding and captivity (about fifteen years or so it seems), they changed their DNA to a great extent to become domestic foxes. But this not have much to do in the context of the Great Work we speak, just comes to my mind.
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@SmokingMonkey said
"Well, evolution in that sense, yes. What I mean is that this potential does not make the human specie a special being, more evolved or whatever."
I didn't say anything about that, one way or the other.
"Artificially there´s cases of wild foxes, who, after some twenty generations of breeding and captivity (about fifteen years or so it seems), they changed their DNA to a great extent to become domestic foxes. But this not have much to do in the context of the Great Work we speak, just comes to my mind."
It has everything to do with the Great Work. Domesticated animals have a rudimentary Ruach, rather than just being Nephesh-driven, and that's quite explicitly a part of the G.'.W.'. (albeit a part that humans do without special effort).
Basically, it is moving the foxes (as a species) from the isis Aeoon into the dawning of the Osiris Aeon.