Ordeals of the paths
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I can find plenty of info on the Ordeals associated with the sephirah, but there seems to be a shortage of info on those of the paths of the tree of life. The obvious and well known one is the Tau Ordeal, but how about the other ones. Are there classic ways in which these wouldγmanifest in the aspirants life?
I
m particularly interested in the pre-adept paths, being Shin, Resh, Qoph, Tzaddi, Peh, Nun, Samech and Ain.For myself, although I
m a bit loathe to go into detail on a public forum, some of those I have passed through seem to have happened almost without a hitch, my current one however has me very much perplexed. If anyone who has been through these has any advise or reflections they would like to share then Im more than happy to discuss, although for specifics a PM might be more appropriate.93 93/93
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First, I'm assuming you are talking about the A.'.A.'. scale. If not, then ignore anything I say below.
The Middle Pillar ones are the most notorious, since they correspond to shifts between the Four Worlds. For the others, I'm not exactly used to thinking of them as life ordeals in the same sense - they are just processes that are in play, and mappings of techniques (the assigned tasks for each Path) that help one through the clearer ordeals of the grades (sephiroth) themselves. Tav, rather than just being Tav per se in this process, is the singular opening unto Yesod and the World of Yetzirah in general. Samekh, similarly, subsumes all the other processes around it and represents the alchemy that finishes the transmutation of the entirety of the Yetziratic aspect of oneself and its lifting up, or opening up, unto Briah and, especially, Tiphereth in Briah.
The others... well, their ordeals are addressed by the assigned tasks of the training system. These can highlight "hot spots" in an individual's psyche, more or less evident in examining the particular task, though I'm not used to seeing them present overt ordeals in anything resembling those evident from the sephiroth.
At the risk of generalizing excessively (i.e., making stuff up), it feels like the Paths, being ways of going, do not have ordeals because one is in motion. The sephiroth do have distinctive ordeals of the kind I think you mean because they are inherently plateaus, static. In general, one has ordeals from NOT MOVING, and any imbalances sort themselves out in the going provided that one is in motion; so Paths are not so prone to these.
Resistance to the process of a Path, however, is being resistant to motion, and that could cause some problems. The usual solution is to identify it and stop resisting - usually by undertaking the assigned process for that Path.
Those are generalities. As for your last paragraph, and with respect to your wish for privacy, I'd nonetheless offer that if there is one particular Path on which you'd like more directed comments, I'm happy to see if I have anything particular to say about it.
PS - The Paths opening to the next sephirah are not really "traversed" sequentially. They are concurrent. One may see manifestations that are time-sequential - that would be an outworking of an individual's psyche and karma - but, in the deeper picture, Shin and Resh are opened concurrently. (One may simply recognize the impact one one's body and on one's psyche at different times - and not everyone feels the body impact before the impact on subconsciousness, so it may even seem that one "works" Resh before Shin. But they are both opening at once.) Similarly, Qoph, Tzaddi, and Peh are all concurrent.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"In general, one has ordeals from NOT MOVING, and any imbalances sort themselves out in the going provided that one is in motion; so Paths are not so prone to these.
Resistance to the process of a Path, however, is being resistant to motion, and that could cause some problems. The usual solution is to identify it and stop resisting - usually by undertaking the assigned process for that Path."
Thanks for this...kinda resonates with me!
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@Jim Eshelman said
"First, I'm assuming you are talking about the A.'.A.'. scale. If not, then ignore anything I say below."
This is correct. I spent quite a bit of time earlier in my Work going through the paths & Sephirah below Tiphareth in Assiah, 'to get the lay of the land' so to speak. That work did suggest where I might have issues once I started work in Yetzirah so I guess it's time for a diary review to get a bit of perspective.
"The Middle Pillar ones are the most notorious, since they correspond to shifts between the Four Worlds. For the others, I'm not exactly used to thinking of them as life ordeals in the same sense - they are just processes that are in play, and mappings of techniques (the assigned tasks for each Path) that help one through the clearer ordeals of the grades (sephiroth) themselves."
'Repeat to self as Mantra: The map is not the territory, the map is not the territory', Thanks for the reminder
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The others... well, their ordeals are addressed by the assigned tasks of the training system. These can highlight "hot spots" in an individual's psyche, more or less evident in examining the particular task, though I'm not used to seeing them present overt ordeals in anything resembling those evident from the sephiroth."'Hot spots' is a good way to put it, I've certainly had a few of those highlighted. The thing I notice is that the Ordeal of the Sephirah seems to act as a catalyst for a lot of introspection which in turn seems to get the path/processes moving, although this isn't always particularly comfortable, I have noticed quite a bit of resistance on my part, together with some pretty vivid dreams of a particularly lucid and numinous character.
"At the risk of generalizing excessively (i.e., making stuff up), it feels like the Paths, being ways of going, do not have ordeals because one is in motion. The sephiroth do have distinctive ordeals of the kind I think you mean because they are inherently plateaus, static. In general, one has ordeals from NOT MOVING, and any imbalances sort themselves out in the going provided that one is in motion; so Paths are not so prone to these."
A generalisation maybe but a useful one to bear in mind, it certainly feels like I am somewhat snagged on an area of my ingrained psyche that I had always managed to ignore before, but which is now staring me in the face. I'm going to have to do some severe psychological renovation to get past this one. Which incidentally gives me a clue that actually the path that's giving me issues might not be the one I thought it was, but one that I hadn't started actively working on yet, so a change in strategy might be in order.
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Those are generalities. As for your last paragraph, and with respect to your wish for privacy, I'd nonetheless offer that if there is one particular Path on which you'd like more directed comments, I'm happy to see if I have anything particular to say about it."Thanks for this, I am generally pretty loath to discuss my own work on forums, or with anyone except my immediate Superior because I've had ego-inflation problems when it comes to grade material and I'm trying to burst that particular bubble.
"Similarly, Qoph, Tzaddi, and Peh are all concurrent."
This is pretty much what I was looking for, as I mentioned above it seems obvious now that at least part of the problem has come from confusing the paths and assuming that the processing that is meeting resistance is coming from the path I am actively working, whereas it's quite likely to be coming from one that I had been saving until later, but it looks like the path itself has other plans.
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Is your analysis applicable to orders outside of the A.'.A.'. Jim?
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@Al-Shariyf said
"Is your analysis applicable to orders outside of the A.'.A.'. Jim?"
Some of the principles are applicable. Not the details, though. (Different scale.)
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Cool
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@kasper81 said
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however I feel that when someone is asking , "what am I to expect on path x, y or z? " then they are stuck"Correction: was stuck.
A small change in perspective and things are now rolling along fairly well, I've even had dreams confirming the same. -
@Takamba said
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@Archaeus said
"I've even had dreams confirming the same."
*looks around to see if Los is coming "Who cares what Los thinks to be perfectly honest,But if I get a dream (and I do a lot of Lucid dreaming, so my unconscious and conscious communicate pretty well) that confirms in terms that are not only unmistakable, but also couched in terms that I had not consciously thought of using, then for me that`s a message that only an idiot would ignore of bother to argue the toss about.