This flowing nature of our home sphere is important to keep in mind. It's a vital part of the Mystery at the core of Hermetics.* Our paths never stop. The "accomplishment" of the Great Work is a phrase we toss about as if it were possible to ever do more than finish up a part of it before moving on to the next. There is no end. As my gnostic friends say, "The Eucharist never ends!" That's important to remember.
We are constantly in motion, all of us, as long as we exist. We don't really stop moving. We're growing, shaping, changing, processing, evaluating, planning, executing. We are always doing something. Even when we are deep in no-mind meditation, we have not stopped anything necessary. Which is an understanding that is sort of the whole point of no-mind meditation, in my humble opinion.
In our magical paths, we are also growing and changing. Jason and I were talking about the Seven Spheres in Seven Days exercise recently, and he mentioned that we tend to forget that we didn't start out where we're at today, and the things we can do now were once intimidating for a reason. It's like weight lifting, the more you do, the more you can do. A weight that you could barely move today can be lifted easily by a future you who has built up the muscle over time.
And that's what I've done over the last few years, I've built up a pretty strong set of spiritual muscles. I did that by performing spiritual exercises regularly, as part of an overall goal, i.e. the "accomplishment" of the Great Work. That's still the framework of my operations. I haven't stopped pursuing the next level, and I do not think that I have "arrived" at any end goal.
I'm going to be talking about some crazy shit soon. I want to make sure that people understand the crazy shit I'll be talking about is taking place within the greater context of my performance of the Great Work. The Crazy Shit is a specialization, a subset of the overall Great Work, and it is by no means taking the place of my continued efforts to keep moving forward, onward and upward. It is a means towards a goal, not the goal itself.
Some of the stuff I'll be talking about isn't "safe." Well, honestly, nothing I talk about is "safe." Even reading my words here on the screen is changing you forever in small ways that will bear fruit in your life starting now. It's the nature of existence. Transmissions of information through symbol change the world. And change is never guaranteed to be safe, painless, or uncomfortable.
But the stuff I'm going to be talking about will be more dangerous than reading a blog post. Jumping into some of this stuff without having gone through the stuff I teach in the Red Work series of courses could cause some really unpleasant shit to surface if you haven't spent some time figuring out who you are, and how you relate to the forces I'm going to be talking about.
The actual intent of these exercises is experiencing joy by creating my universe to increase my conscious understanding of that essential interface at the core of my awareness. Knowing myself, as it were.
But remember, these exercises are part of the Work, taking place in an environment I've spent years developing, and as part of a greater process. This is like the process of creating rocket fuel, something cool and fun and dangerous to do, but still only a supporting process in the launch of the rocket. And the launch of the rocket is still only a supporting process of the primary mission.
I keep moving forward, modeling my practice and my understanding on the flow-motion of the home-sphere of the Hermetic path.
And I never. stop. moving.
* The Mystery is that we're like gates through which pass the Will of God from Above to Below, and the Experience of Existence from Below to Above at the same time, allatonce. It's in constant flow between the two, but really there's not two. There, you're illuminated.
We are constantly in motion, all of us, as long as we exist. We don't really stop moving. We're growing, shaping, changing, processing, evaluating, planning, executing. We are always doing something. Even when we are deep in no-mind meditation, we have not stopped anything necessary. Which is an understanding that is sort of the whole point of no-mind meditation, in my humble opinion.
In our magical paths, we are also growing and changing. Jason and I were talking about the Seven Spheres in Seven Days exercise recently, and he mentioned that we tend to forget that we didn't start out where we're at today, and the things we can do now were once intimidating for a reason. It's like weight lifting, the more you do, the more you can do. A weight that you could barely move today can be lifted easily by a future you who has built up the muscle over time.
And that's what I've done over the last few years, I've built up a pretty strong set of spiritual muscles. I did that by performing spiritual exercises regularly, as part of an overall goal, i.e. the "accomplishment" of the Great Work. That's still the framework of my operations. I haven't stopped pursuing the next level, and I do not think that I have "arrived" at any end goal.
I'm going to be talking about some crazy shit soon. I want to make sure that people understand the crazy shit I'll be talking about is taking place within the greater context of my performance of the Great Work. The Crazy Shit is a specialization, a subset of the overall Great Work, and it is by no means taking the place of my continued efforts to keep moving forward, onward and upward. It is a means towards a goal, not the goal itself.
Some of the stuff I'll be talking about isn't "safe." Well, honestly, nothing I talk about is "safe." Even reading my words here on the screen is changing you forever in small ways that will bear fruit in your life starting now. It's the nature of existence. Transmissions of information through symbol change the world. And change is never guaranteed to be safe, painless, or uncomfortable.
But the stuff I'm going to be talking about will be more dangerous than reading a blog post. Jumping into some of this stuff without having gone through the stuff I teach in the Red Work series of courses could cause some really unpleasant shit to surface if you haven't spent some time figuring out who you are, and how you relate to the forces I'm going to be talking about.
The actual intent of these exercises is experiencing joy by creating my universe to increase my conscious understanding of that essential interface at the core of my awareness. Knowing myself, as it were.
But remember, these exercises are part of the Work, taking place in an environment I've spent years developing, and as part of a greater process. This is like the process of creating rocket fuel, something cool and fun and dangerous to do, but still only a supporting process in the launch of the rocket. And the launch of the rocket is still only a supporting process of the primary mission.
I keep moving forward, modeling my practice and my understanding on the flow-motion of the home-sphere of the Hermetic path.
And I never. stop. moving.
* The Mystery is that we're like gates through which pass the Will of God from Above to Below, and the Experience of Existence from Below to Above at the same time, allatonce. It's in constant flow between the two, but really there's not two. There, you're illuminated.
I got to do some of this recently with my trip back from Sarasota visiting my parents. I used to dread these kinds of hair-raising journeys where travel arrangements went wrong. Now I kind of enjoy them — there's something mighty fine about making hotel reservations in two different cities on the same night, talking your way out of the usual credit card requirements and insisting that you not be charged, while re-negotiating your ticket to a new flight and getting a voucher for a hotel and re-arranging your pickup arrangements in the even that you actually DO get home... and then having to use the voucher to get home. Good stuff.
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