Story Of My Coming And Of Whence To Go From Here Options

Here is kind of a very short biography of my spiritual and philosophical journey which has lead me to this forum, and the reason why I'm writing this, reaching out. The reason as I understand it is because I want to have a dialogue with people, see if anyone can give me any insight, if others have had similar experiences, and if people could point me in any directions in the form of books, tips, drugs, art, instructions, whatever. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I have referred to myself as an atheist ever since I “grew up”, but have in the latest time begun to approach some sort of spirituality, which I now want to explore with others. There are some references in this text, but even if you have no idea what I'm referring to, you could probably give me input on other stuff if you feel like doing so. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'm sorry if my thoughts are hard to follow and for all the errors I've might done: if I don't post this now, I'll probably never will. I've been burnt out for a couple of years and I'm really really tired most of the time, so bear with me.

I've long been interested in magic. Well, I certainly wanted to believe in it very much as a kid, to much extent because of my mom being a total freak (if you're looking for someone combining belief in a christian god, aliens, ghosts, jewish conspiracies, and much more, look no further!) when it comes to magic. But not only magic practice, or rather not magic practice in itself, but just a lot of beliefs that have no necessary coherence. Combine this with a really fucked up way of raising a kid, with shame, guilt, lies, powerlessness and possessiveness as main ingredients and you get me, and one reason why my disappointment in lack of magic in this world has persisted for a very long time and indeed still lingers. It's emotionally very much connected to the failure of my mom to be a good parent, and of promises never fulfilled.

Definition

You may have noticed that I haven't defined magic yet. Well, it's kind of hard for me, but it's along the lines of transcending the rational, that which isn't proven by an underlying methodology which one can account for, repeat, and understand within the frame of reference which I have. As for spiritual, well, something along the lines of having a reverence for life, surroundings, things, in everyday life, and maybe also here in a non-scientific way. I've always wanted to get feelings of greatness, of wonder, of the sublime, and since I've been a rationalist, atheist, and even dabbled in satanism (laveys, the self-righteous, in my view kind of childish and protectionist), I've long felt that something has been lost to me. I've been thinking that this something is the child within me, the uncorrupted parts, the ones who have a wish for love. That they've atrophied along the way.

Existentialism

Certainly, I would like to practice magic to learn more about these lost parts of myself (haunting me in my dreams), but the need goes beyond that. The existentialist condition eats me from inside. How do I explain suffering? No, not explain, but accept—no, not accept, but make sense of? How do I give myself some time off, stop blaming myself for my own suffering, and how do I transform suffering into something meaningful when I perceive no gods, don't give a shit about the continuation of the human species (see no intrinsic value in life), and on top of that believe that a lot of the shit out there about "suffering ones way to wisdom" is just rationalizations, puritan bullshit, and a fine example of the absurd (in camus sense) tragedy of man and life? This even extends to my work; if I see not pleasure in doing what I want to do, then I might as well do the shit in order to save the good experiences for later, to have something to look forward and to have something to show for it along the way. (This is why I need to remind myself that the journey is more important than the destination from time to time).

Inspiration

Well, about suffering, I'm working on it. Perhaps in the future, suffering won't be necessary? This is where science and sci-fi comes into my life, and how I've used it. Sci-fi has introduced me to hope for future people, but not necessarily for myself , and a responsibility of not fucking up to much so that future generations can transcend the chains of man, become posthuman, transhuman, become cyborgs, clouds of energy, whatever, so that suffering can be minimized and so that the absurdity of desire as desire for something else than that which is now (in deleueze "positive", productive sense, instead of the freudian one), that never ends can just stop somehow. (I've never reconciled with the notion of just putting people in bliss-boxes of the kind as in the matrix though) The sense of greatness and wonder has also for me come often science, often, and not just because I move mainly in the realm of the logic, the rational, with ideas of political science and whatnot, but also through physics and quantum mechanics. It's sort of like magic, some of the things in those fields, and they are great, spans across galaxies, and makes me feel insignificant, yet somehow meaningful. A sense of belonging, with everything else, is at the the center of this and much of my need: to have the love my mother didn't give me (self-help popular psychology), to return to the primordial soup (dna, ancestry, shamanism), return to the womb (lacanian psychoanalysis), etc.

Free will

For example, I've been thinking about free will a lot in my time, troubling myself over the notion that I just can't accept free will because it just isn't there when one perceives the world as a mechanical system, thus one cannot find a logical consistent way of perceiving free will that corresponds to the free will which people so often attribute to themselves. This belief I think mirrors my own sense of being betlittled, not having a very large focus of control (social psychology), and my interest in sociological issues, my world-view of everything from the myth of the lonely genius being a construct to promote certain interests, to the fact that I think the boundaries between people are very small and people are very much affected by forces outside themselves, thus not necessarily so much in control as they would think.

Quantum

Well, free will; what happens if the theories of quantum mechanics which states that consciousness collapses things proves true? Double slit experiments, with observers not only being biased, but actually creating stuff along the way that it is observed. Or spooky entanglement, traveling faster than the speed of light. What if chaos is not only a measure of how much information there is, a term to denote the failure of scientists to enter a system and perceive what's there (and how to control it), but if chaos actually exists, and random things happen all the time, thus dislodging the universe from it's clockwork frame and freeing man from the constructs of determinism, leading to free will? These thoughts blow me away, and I've long been interested in philosophy of mind, study of artificial intelligence; once again, sci(fi)ence as a platform to discuss the human nature and condition. To a large degree though, I'm a cynic, and fall back to not so grand notions of humans not being anything special, the spiritual world just being atoms, and me not seeing the grandness in people and life which others seem to see and use to move on and aspire towards.

Imperfect science

My cynicism has not only been bad though, because it has opened up some very interesting paths. I'm cynical about my own rationality for example, and the rationality of others, which is why I have such a great interest in psychology. Perceiving the world through Norrestedts "User Illusion" for example, Gladwells "Blink", and Gilberts "Stumbling on Happiness". We think we are in control, but there is more to our bodies and brains than we think, and in the words of Robert Anton Wilson, “what the thinker thinks, the prover proves”. We believe ourselves to be this rational person, and we think that what we think emanates from within us, from our own capacity, while it seems that often our body has decided what we should do before we realize it (as in libets famous experiment), or that there is some other force within us that we aren't aware of, with people who are most cynical about their own knowing of these forces even sometimes are those who have most control over them (as is the case with commercials, where some studies indicate that people who believe themselves to be easily affected actually aren't). We think we know what we want, but experiment after experiment argues that this is not the case, and that the experience of others is a better measure to what we can expect to like and be happy from. Or what about the fact that much of our knowledge is silent, just perhaps as Schopenhauer had it, that intuition comes from logic, but that logic at some point just needs to be cut of to go ahead with the task at hand. Or consciousness, rather, should be cut of.



User illusion

We think that we need to focus, apply ourselves, when often letting go is a crucial way of doing stuff good, and of being happy, yet in conflict with control need, rationality, and the fact that we think that what we come up with is really ours. When I'm into something, it just might as well be god speaking through me, because I sure as hell don't think about what I'm writing just now. If I did, I'd lock myself out and there would just be a big dark, not able to move.



What magic for?

These ideas lead me to magic in the sense that I want to open up to my own irrationality, open up to the possibility of being something more than me, to live in symbiosis with it, and not just assume that I know everything about me, or that I am in control. To deal with these control issues that I have. Quote: To look at science as in some sense socially constructed offers a way in through the back door to religion as an epistemological partner in the construction/discovery of nature and culture. Religion, which has long been attacked and deconstructed as mythic delusion, can now claim some pragmatic parity with the scientific worldview that attacked it.



Emotional side

I have ignored my emotional sides for too long, or rather I've been in more or less constant anxiety for 13 years (I'm 23), cutting myself, taking pills, displacing thoughts, keeping busy, trying to get by, masturbating, developing addiction to video games, and more...I've been having a hard time imagining whatever I want to imagine, which was one of those obsessive thoughts I got as a ten year old. Everything I would try to imagine, I couldn't. I imagined I played tennis, and I couldn't get the ball over the net. The more I tried, the more I failed. I started to choke and imagined myself that I couldn't swallow my saliva, that when I started running, I couldn't stop, etc.



Eternity, bad mental health

I got interested in philosophy in third grade and got interested in eternity, for some reason. Eternity is hard to imagine now for me, but I actually tried to imagine the eternal then, and got really frightened, but also excited. I could connect somehow to this notion, and used it to freak out and feel a sense of... not belonging, but just, of being alive. This was why when as a kid when I went home from friends at night and vision was bad, and even though I imagined that there were really hard, thin, sharp ropes laid out everywhere outside, I would run and just run. I also started to imagine that something was running after me, and so I had to run, sort of. Kind of like the double bind of everything I felt was my growing up, that no matter what I did it would go wrong, as in the kind of absurd example of my mom thinking I shouldn't take the buss because it might crash and I might die (making my mom sad), and my grandmother (whom I had a lot of contact with) saying I shouldn't walk because I might get hit by a car!



Dreams horror

I was very interested in horror too as a kid, and stephen king especially, but then it got harder and harder and in periods I haven't watched horror at all because I just get more anxious. Then I developed fear of eternity and had dreams of it, really frightening ones. I also had other really scary nightmares, and some of them very so inspiring that I wanted to have them, that I felt not-real when I woke up and just wanted to go back. “Was I a human dreaming I was a butterfly, or a butterfly...”, and such. A sort of nostalgia that I also have felt very strongly over my childhood for the last 6-7 years, and now perhaps in a wish to synthesize my moms emotional, acting out side with my dads, distant rational side, within me. To forgive all those demons, people bullying me, and find that person inside me that feels sorrow and not just anxiety.



Imagination

I think a lot of my problems stem, or are related to the fact that I have a hard time imagining stuff. And to the fact that I have no trouble imagining by default, which I do all the time, but it's just that I can't direct my imagination (which is why lucid dreaming attracts me). Sometimes I imagine something so strong that I can hear myself say something when I snap out of it, but this happens only when I fantasize about something awful, scary. I often have voices telling me that I'm not worth it, voices that even fool me sometimes to think they're positive ones, like for example when I go up the stairs and just want to cry because my body can't take it anymore, and I use a sort of anger towards something to make it. But when I make it to the top, it's just sort of... not a pat on the back, more like nothing, or a cynical comment, “yeah you fucking a$%*#!*, “good for you””. Like this drill sergeant working me up.



Be positive, doubt

I have a hard time invoking positive emotions, to get less anxious. Positive thinking has been hard for me, leading to more self-loathing, and me reading books on positive thinking as an industry, making me more cynical. Like really, how can I tell that people are honest about their feelings and their own happiness? Are people even capable of remembering correctly? And even if they are, a lot of people who talk about loving your neighbor, or just feeling sorry for those who haven't discovered the cure of positive thinking, or god, or whatever, are really very, very hateful people. Like everything about what they say and how they act is so damn... f%*!, it makes me really sad and cynical. And I also wonder if I'm crazy because others don't see it.



Dark sides

I've been even thinking that maybe one has to be an a$%*#!* to be happy, something I thought about a lot during my high school years, where I imagined myself going on killing sprees on a daily basis, and developed (or strengthened) a real cynical way of looking at things by looking at how grown ups fucked up the world with politics and child-care and everything else. Like how do you get power? By being an a$%*#!*, and claiming that those who are worth happiness and a privileged position will crawl up from their mediocrity and become like those in power, leaving those who cannot manage in the dust. A hate for weakness, a fear of it, of it spreading, isolating those who are weak, distancing from them, making them unhuman, etc. This is at the heart of politics, to a large degree, and in highschool it was definitely what all of it seemed to me. Depressive realism, I understood my own clarity as.



Borderline

Coming back to being connected, with others, I've been thinking a lot about how others effect me, how strong my ego is, how my borderline tendencies work, how people really are animals with primal needs, for their infancy forever a part of them, and I've been thinking about how all this relates to self-hate, and how I think I punish myself because I have learned that this is the proper reaction against people “like me” (sexual deviants, weak people, people with different opinions, different needs, bad thoughts, bad bad bad). I read some Ayn Rand before, and still love Atlas Shrugged, for the sense of entitlement it gave me, a sense of being chosen, of strength. Things that to some degree are problematic and rhetorical, dangerous even, but still gave me strength to put up with the day. But I still despise Ayn Rand and the politics zie stands for and I believe that I was right-wing before in order to hate myself even more. In order to destroy the world because I hated it so much, which is what the effect of right wing politics is according to me.



Autonomy

The conflict of depressive realism still haunted me (do I have to be unhappy to see reason, and is everyone who really sees the truth and their own inability, their unreason/insignificance just destined to be unhappy?), and I have tried ways to think myself strong, or realize my potential, think positive, and find a logical way to become what I want to be. I have a little voice within me who tells me that to abandon a certain kind of logic is betrayal of oneself, and I've been struggling to reconcile the notion of people being social animals controlled very much by forces around them, and the philosophical notions of Der mann (Heidegger), bad faith/inauthenticity (Sartre), slave moral (Nietzsche). I've been trying to strengthen my sense of me, of will to power, not hiding behind polysemic words which are vague enough not to make it apparent what I really think or where I stand. I've been trying to see the world as under my control, and tried to convince myself that to give up belief of growth, change and capacity, is just a weak act of self-loathing, regress to an immature state of being, and something essentially for psychic vampires and false, cowardly people.



Cynic

Contrasted to this are the notions of superiority I've felt when thinking that I'm too smart to be happy, and that I'm really just one of those people who actually knows how much of an a$%*#!* I am, and since I'm not able to convince myself of my greatness, I might as well find my superiority in the fact that others fool themselves that they're better than average (which most people think in like everything, the figures are astonishing, and every experiment that I've seen has confirmed this) and by fooling themselves this, they reap the fruits by getting jobs where they get a lot of money, a lot of chicks, all the love and respect, yet destroy the rain forests and leave me here not just without any of those above, but contempt and a political agenda where they try to push me down, out on the streets, even more.



One could get angry for less, of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Dualities

Mirroring these dualities which I've been walking across, trying to reconcile, are my thoughts on rationality and emotions. I don't trust my rational capacities, because there is something behind them that I have no clue over, yet I cannot believe intuition, because it leads me to self-destructive actions and to just keep up the behaviors that I've been doing that lead to self-hate. Therapy for me has been much about making aware, taking up to the surface, that which is below, just beyond, and for this I've had to (?) use rationality. All of this is mom and dad, all over again, trying to be reconciled. My own experience of something as a child in conflict with with the reality of the grown ups, imprinting me, leading to self-doubt on my part. Oh, it doesn't hurt? Oh, ok... After a while, you start to believe WHATEVER your parents tell you, if they're good enough brainwashers, and the whole institution of family is kind of that (not just in a negative sense).

Downside of rationalism

Even though science (and “psuedoscience” like psychology) has helped me a lot then, I cannot escape the fact that I come back to just feeling kind of unsatisfied,of atomising stuff so much, reducing it to so small components that it in the end makes no sense, in the sense that it doesn't feel meaningful. Oh, is that all there is? There's too little magic, simply put. More awareness, more knowledge, seems to have made me more cynical, but also lost more touch with my self/the spiritual. I say it again: the rational world is boring. Well, not exclusively so, and certainly quantum mechanics, astronomy, dna, evolution, and many many oher things are mind-blowing and amazing. Yet, somehow, there is this need for fantasy, beyond, within me. The search for cool things. Well, yes, really the word I'm looking for is cool. I'm not sure how immature this is considered, or if it is indeed immature, but I think we all need something to feel empowered by, something that we can find focus and ourselves in, and “coolness” is one way of putting it for me. Something evocative, provoking, etheral, eternal, I don't know, ancestral, awesome. Like the notion of tarot cards for example, or the aesthetics of wicca, or something else.



Some theories

Enter baudrillard, who maybe can give me an explanation. A quote: Baudrillard asserts that Dick's novel depicts a gigantic "hologram in three dimensions, in which fiction will never again be a mirror held toward the future, but a desperate hallucination of the past" and that in its historical moment this type of science fiction is produced by societies that have lost the pioneering imagination, that have spanned their territory from ocean to ocean, because "when the map covers the whole territory, something like the principle of reality disappears" He argues that human excursions into space, which effectively project earthly habitats into the transcendence of outer space, signal the "the end of metaphysics, the end of the phantasm, the end of science fiction" and the beginning of the era of hyperreality.



So maybe I want the hallucination of the past, the ancestry, the eternal god, the wholeness, as a side effect of my map covering so much, just self-references spearing everything, no fantasy left, the rational mind encompassing all so that everything must be proven or disbelieved, and nothing beyond that, and since we need the fantasy, that beyond, that productive desire, shit just hits the fan... Although this hyperreality could mean the end of reality as “veil of maya” of firmed reality and perception of being singular and not all-encompassing too... even if much of my thoughts concerning becoming my own are about being separate, because only then can one truly make contact with other, without fear of being under their boot. It's sort of like transactional analysis, where one has to give grown up messages to a grown up receiver for communication to work. Love oneself to love others, that sort of thing. From Haraways Cyborg Manifesto:

Every story that begins with original innocence and privileges the return to wholeness imagines the drama of life to be individuation, separation, the birth of the self, the tragedy of autonomy, the fall into writing, alienation; that is, war, tempered by imaginary respite in the bosom of the Other. These plots are ruled by a reproductive politics --rebirth without flaw, perfection, abstraction. In this plot women are imagined either better or worse off, but all agree they have less selflhood, weaker individuation, more fusion to the oral, to Mother, less at stake in masculine autonomy. But there is another route to having less at stake in masculine autonomy, a route that does not pass through Woman, Primitive, Zero, the Mirror Stage and its imaginaw. It passes through women and other present-tense, illegitimate cyborgs, not of Woman born, who refuse the ideological resources of victimization so as to have a real life.



Entropy

But is there a turning back from knowledge? It's more a question of perception I guess, knowledge as not something static, which incidentally reminds me of how those who make magic/spiritual journeys in cultural artifacts often are asked if they are prepared for that journey, because there is not turning back... and so magic maybe for me is what changes the perception of science, and eternal fuckery and dread. Like for example entropy, take that as an example. Everything is going to hell, basically, the heat death of the whole universe, according to the laws of thermodynamics. This is something which is kind of cool AND depressing, something I think I could work into a spiritual practice because it is something I both fear and admire and cannot keep away from. It is the meaning of life, people being the opposite of entropy, the forces combating chaos, the mythological chaos. Maybe we're not just dumb animals, but dumb gods...

Time

Maybe there's a eternal recurrence in the universe, an infinite number of universes with infinite amounts of time, thus making me come back and back and back... well, me and everyone else, of course. This too is kind of frightening... I think eternity is key for me to spirituality. Like Prot says in K-Pax, basically paraphrasing Nietzsches conception of the eternal recurrence, said: I wanna tell you something Mark, something you do not yet know, that we K-PAXians have been around long enough to have discovered. The universe will expand, then it will collapse back on itself, then will expand again. It will repeat this process forever. What you don't you know is that when the universe expands again, everything will be as it is now. Whatever mistakes you make this time around, you will live through on your next pass. Every mistake you make, you will live through again, & again, forever. So my advice to you is to get it right this time around. Because this time is all you have.



Another quote: According to Eliade, this yearning to remain in the mythical age causes a "terror of history". Traditional man desires to escape the linear march of events [the forces of entropy being something that made the difference in the newtonian conception of time, introducing the time of arrow and thus explaining why time is not the same backwards and forwards], empty of any inherent value or sacrality. In Chapter 4 of The Myth of the Eternal Return (entitled "The Terror of History") and in the appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, Eliade suggests that the abandonment of mythical thought and the full acceptance of linear, historical time, with its "terror", is one of the reasons for modern man's anxieties. Traditional societies escape this anxiety to an extent, as they refuse to completely acknowledge historical time.



Opposite of tao

Sounds a bit like the whole notion of rationality and science, of going to the future, deferring everything to what can be discovered later rather than now, which rather than a return or rooting leads to uprooting, flying, etc. I want to fly, but in a different way! I had these wonderful dreams of flying as a kid, but haven't had them for many many years now. Many I need to be more open to mistakes, more open to feelings? According to analytical psychology (jung):

The basic assumption is that the personal unconscious is a potent part — probably the more active part — of the normal human psyche. Reliable communication between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche is necessary for wholeness.

Also crucial is the belief that dreams show ideas, beliefs, and feelings of which individuals are not readily aware, but need to be, and that such material is expressed in a personalized vocabulary of visual metaphors. Things "known but unknown" are contained in the unconscious, and dreams are one of the main vehicles for the unconscious to express them.

An innate need for self-realization leads people to explore and integrate these disowned parts of themselves. This natural process is called individuation, or the process of becoming an individual.



Problem with therapy

Notions of wholeness aside, I believe there is much to explore here. I'm not sure how though, since I've had like 7-8 therapists by now and sure, I enjoy the sessions and like what they bring to my life, but for now don't get any “homework”, and when doing CBT I did indeed get homework, but much focused on coping, a type of coping which had nothing spelled “magic” over it, at least not for me, but was more about distraction and confronting, confronting, confronting. Yet it kind of never got better, I felt, and that focus has always been more on making me suffer through stuff in order for me to be able to work so that the state wouldn't have to take care of me.



Worth, to be thankful

I want to believe in something mystical, and in my own sense of worth, of things being able to be conquered, coped, accepted, of things becoming better, yet it's very hard for me to do it on a rational level since I already believe it on that level. Maybe in robert anton wilsons words, I should become vulnerable on some type of imprint level so that I can easier change? How would I do that, kick me up until I felt like shit, and then tell myself that things will get better? Believe me, I have thought about it! For example in the first Saw movie, a person got kidnapped and tortured, and then afterwards thanked the kidnapper and told the police that hir life got a sense of meaning afterwards. As Jigsaw says: You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore. Well, after my suicide attempt, I did kind of get my shit together for a while...



Catch 22

I already believe, from a rational point of view, in healing. But a part of me doesn't, then. Catch 22 there. How do I reprogram myself? Through a state of gnosis? Do I refuse to give in to "magic" because my mother was into it, and I feel disappointed me in more than one way? Or do I need to accept the irrational mother within me and appease this goddess, even if it means finding my own spiritual belief? I feel I need to fool myself somehow, then, become the warlock. Become the bricoleur in the postmodern condition, playing with pieces, utilizing modern science to free myself from the tyranny of logic, of positivism, of mechanization. With uncertainty principles, gödels incompleteness theorems and its consequences of potential human turing machines, confirmation holism and the need of theory/practice in science which fucks up logic, derrida, deconstruction and the incongruency/aporia of every text, etc.

What works?

There have been studies where people got a placebo effect even when they knew that they would get the damn placebo pill, so maybe this is something I can use for self-healing? Like what, did they get the placebo effect just out of spite, because they thought they were being played in a case of reverse psychology? That would work with me, since I have a very emotional response to authority figures, which can be just about anybody laying claim to truth, or anyone involved with calling people “masters” or “good sirs” or similar. But I'm also always thinking that I'm the ultimate “other”, nothing works on me, I'm just to rational, etc, or that I just simply am so much a skeptic that it won't work no matter what... But I believe in self-belief and working outside the paradigm of science (at the same time using science to prove my points; further, the paradoxical nature of everything, the ultimate collapse, the infinite regress of everything leading back to “god”) and one meta-study showed that people get better in treatment because of different things than there being a manual, a big and large array of empirical evidence backing it up, etc. This study (by Frank and Frank iirc) shows how people get better in therapy, in different manual based treatments, and other, and that the most important thing is the belief of the patient, and the contact with the professional, most of all. Some psychologist, whose name I now don't remember, even claimed that what a client needs is a friend, and not a therapist, and that real, human contact is what makes people better.

New views on psychiatry

For the last year, my psychosomatic pains culminated, ever since I've been on sick leave for a year. And I mean a lot of pain, even though I'm used to it ever since forever (mainly back- and stomach pain). This is when I started reading Eckhart Tolle and other literature on psychosomatic pain, and got convinced that it probably has a lot to do with my psyche. I've also been interested in salutogenic perspectives, trying to focus on what works instead of what doesn't, and anti-psychiatric theories (but not in the way scientologists are, they're too much conspiracy freaks and stupid), such as those of Laing, Szasz, Kärfve (in Sweden), Foucault. Even counter-culture has seemed interesting, with Timothy Leary, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and others who explore the spirituality with drugs. Huxley wrote that the sober mind has a series of filters on it that basically prevent abstract thought. I read this on a forum:

Only when man is rationally schizophrenic, shall the doors of occult freedom liberate him from the chains of scientism and religion!

It takes a fool to remain sane, so to speak.

Drugs

Unfortunately, I'm afraid of drugs, afraid I won't have cool experiences. A have heard people saying that any experience while on LCD is a good experience, even if it becomes a nightmare, because ones learns about oneself. Hell, people say that about anxiety too and then I should be like totally aware of who I am by know, so I take this notion sceptically. I have feelings of unrealness sometimes without taking drugs, dissasociate, depersonalize, yet this is not something I find pleasure in, and when I've taken drugs things have gotten worse. Maybe it has to do with fear of letting go. Maybe something else. I want to become "a part of", have this feeling of belonging, and very rarely, in meditation, I've had subtle yet awesome experiences of transcending. It had a lot to do with being really tired, pumped up, losing balance, closing eyes, focusing on weird stuff. Quite pleasureable, though. Yet I'm afraid that I cannot reach these states when otherwise feeling good. For example, has anyone done research on how hypnosis susceptibility affects meditative practices? I have very low hypno susceptibility, and was even in a study on precognition because of this (since they wanted people who are easily and hardly hypnotized). Can this be trained? I think hypnosis is also self-hypnosis, and that suggestions and auto-suggestions are important for changing oneself, discovering ones potential, ones unconscious, and to have experiences which I want to have. Since my imagination is so darn bad, I feel this stops me.



Meditation leads to more dissociation and is for me not necessarily enjoyable, but I've been doing it now again because I'm thinking maybe I need to cross some barrier. Is the only way to confront it to actually go there, and not try to fix the day so that you won't need to go there? (do your homework first thing in the day) But maybe the neurosis is what is needed to keep me from a psychosis? When one pulls the rug under ones defense mechanisms, will one make it? My CBT therapists have been telling me that distraction is the key, and well, I've been distracting myself for many many years now (I'm 23). Any ideas on perception altering stuff I can try which won't lead to a psychosis or bad tripping? Ganja is definitely, in both forms, bad for me as of now. I'm thinking lighter stuff, like alcohol, or something else which I haven't heard of. Ointments, things that smell, things that affect your senses. Drugs, but not “real drugs” like hasch or lcd or the likes because I get bad trips from them and suspect I might f%*! up my life for good with a psychosis if I take those in the state I'm in. I like tiger balm for example since it gives me a very physical sensation which I can channel to feel-goodyness.

You know what, I have more to write about myself, and many more questions, but maybe I'll stop here for now just to see what kind of response I get. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) These are the key areas I can think of now, but I'm not claiming that I have full knowledge of myself or that there even is a right knowledge, so I'm thankful for whatever people have to say to me, be it bad or good, or beyond those categories, value judgment, tips of different kinds, etc.

---------------Some points:

-------I feel a spontaneous affinity with chaos magick, taking the view of others. The book Diceman was a big influence on me, and the notion of being able to play out different parts of oneself in order to grow was to me awesome and rung true.



---- I have a lot of psychosomatic pain, and I'm very prone to bad suggestions (if someone asks me if my stomach hurts, it will start hurting, and if someone scratches their head, mine starts to itch), so maybe I can use this to my advantage somehow? I have good empathy too, and a hard time knowing what's my emotions and what's projections from others, but I practice spirituality mostly by myself and even have a real hard time connecting to the spirituality I have with only myself, when others are around. How do you practice spirituality everyday, and within society? I remember an idea in Neil Strauss “the Game”, where someone would give a thing to a waitress and tell them that they're filling this with energy for the waitress to carry around the whole day. Thing is, I can only think of one thing at a time! Oh shit, now I'm thinking that only the rational and conscious side of me is doing all the work, again! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)



But this brings me to another point.



---- When I see the mind, I don't do the mind. Eckhart Tolle said that one should always leave a bit of attention, energy, in oneself, in ones detachment, when going ahead with ones business. My experience is that then I cannot fully become one with something else, I cannot focus on anything clearly. I'm also a bit sceptical about the "always detached" approach. But really, if I try to leave the little bit of me conscious, I cannot even read and understand what I'm reading! Do you have any experience with this?



----- Thinking, can one think in something else than thought? How would one go about this? Sometimes when I get flashes of ideas, aha-experiences, this happens without words kind of. Sometimes I understand something, and feel the need to formulate myself in words, yet cannot find them. I think this is a key to my potential greatness and growth.

------ In tao, one takes what one has, and uses it. Can I get addicted to misery in this way do you think? Like if instead of feeling sorry for the pain in the stomach, I try to use that feeling and churning and perceive it as some kind of cosmic vortex, feeling the energy of being alive, could I feed this feeling, encouraging the psychosomatic pain? My body therapist told me this and forbid me to acknowledge the pain, which is the opposite of what Tolle says. And sure, it hurts more when I give my attention to it, but in the long run I don't know...

----- I have a problem of not feeling greatness, the aha of being, as when reading about stuff. Like I can read a book on something and feeling all optimistic or happy or AHA, this is IT! The aha-experiences comes, and it goes. I don't get it when reading the same thing a second time, and certainly less often when doing other stuff than when reading. But I can't read all the time! One of the reasons why I feel like I feel is probably because I sit in books all day.

---- Astral projection, lucid dreaming: tips on books? Do I have a chance?

---- Prerequisite for magic? What stops people? Alcohol, drugs, etc. I try working with senses, dizzyness, alcohol. Different things, experiment, not just waiting for perfect time because it never comes. But among people, really hard for me to meditate or let loose.

Let's start with what you've got. You're strongly biased toward rationality, so here http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/model.html is a good enough (though incomplete, like all theories of magick) set of models for your rational mind to use.

You're also very scattered so I recommend concentration exercises, such as from http://www.amazon.com/Practicing-Jhanas-Tr...16864707&sr=1-1 to give you control of your own mind. This is an essential skill in magickal practice.

You've grown up with magickal practices that directly contradict your experience with the real world. I suggest you learn a simple type of effective energy work, such as http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Touch-Power-...16864974&sr=1-1 , not because it is especially "magickal" but because, in my experience, it is extremely easy to learn and is a good demonstration that magick exists. After that, review the postings here and on http://chaosmatrix.org for further magickal exercises and procedures. I also suggest that if you decide to seriously practice magick you review Carl Jung's books concerning the collective unconscious; you will run into many of the "archetypes" he describes and should be familiar with them.

Your description of how people "get ahead" is absolutely correct... if you're dealing with psychopathic personalities. In my experience it's both a mundane and magickal problem. Dig around on the net for "Mask of Sanity" by Hervey Cleckley (on Amazon for a wildly inflated price) to understand what you're dealing with.

Last, and this may sound trite, do not make the study of magick your entire life. I see that you have a weakness for philosophy; magick is even more seductive and can be an obsession. Balance is one of the key virtues; spend at least as much time with friends and doing physical things as practicing magick.

That's my advice for what it's worth.

Both alcohol and drugs (abused) will be a bock to success. By abusing drugs I mean using them outside of having a legitimate medical condition or having a glass of wine with dinner. There are a lot of problems with using them but as far as magic is concerned your results won't be good, I speak from experience. Magic is actually difficult and powerful, so maybe you should be successful with some other stuff before coming to this area. Many people seem to think that magic is just something that's okay to do, sort of like "playing" religion where you just kind of mess around and have a cool title for what you are.

Really I feel magic is a field where after you begin excelling in other parts of life you can approach. Sometimes stuff happens where I have to take a break because life is becoming difficult and I have to re-adjust my outlook.

Haha no you will not get addicted to the pain of change. I get the impression you really should fix your personal problems before testing the waters of magic. Maybe talk to a councilor, some insurances cover that sort of thing.

My final word is to comment that part you wrote about atlas shrugged and entitlement and uniqueness.. ect. You are not very much different than a huge number of other people so maybe instead of trying to find safe "corners" such as magic and sexual deviance and all these other things, try and be like other people a little more. Normal other people. Make being normal your foundation for a while. Whatever happened to you wasn't your fault but now it's time to change for better.

Waterfall:

Thanks for comprehensive and thoughtful answers!


Concentration exercises something I will definitely look into, as of now I'm doing meditation daily with different kinds of practices: sometimes just becoming empty, sometimes rooting myself, or connecting to my emotions, etc. But how will one concentrate better in daily life from doing meditation in-between so to speak? For example I've been going to several physiotherapists, and sure, I get the instructions, but I still have to remind myself like every couple of minutes while doing something to not get into a bad posture -- preparation before something certainly doesn't do it all. But I'm hoping that many different practices have a holistic effect.

"You've grown up with magickal practices that directly contradict your experience with the real world." Could you explain this more, and how it corresponds to energy work? Do you mean to say that I've experienced magic, yet explained it in a rational fashion?

Heh, certainly not everyone is a psychopath, but I'm aware that people in big positions have those tendencies (see snakes in suits, or american psycho ("I can feel my mask of sanity slipping"). Also when I discovered the "self help"-place in my public library I discovered that in very many of the books about burning out, people who had gotten physically sick from stressing too much were a) women b) on the verge of a nervous breakdown for long periods of time c) with male bosses d) who were power-hungry psychos. I feel this is very common for men in power positions and certainly, if women want to get ahead, they too probably become this way because these are the rules.

Thanks, your advice speak a great deal to me! I try to incorporate magic thinking into my physical training as well, a sort of mindfulness, intention, for example. But I haven't yet become the person with the pony tail/cat and very calm voice who never gets angry or wants to listen to metal and have violent sex. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

Tomber:

Do you know people who do magic successfully yet abuse drugs? Maybe it depends on what success is, but people who I respect and inspire me seem to be doing quite a lot of drugs. Didn't crowley? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) But drugs may be even more hard to to successfully than any other kind of magic, at least for me.

What would you believe one would have to have success in before on encounters magic? I think mostly I need to do stuff to stop procrastinating; that damn book with archetypes by jung has been in my bookshelf for a couple of years now, and there always seems to be other stuff to partake in, another marxist to read, a new shrink to visit, or another video game to ponder... Right now, for me magic doesn't necessarily feel more dangerous than other things I've been doing in my life, or perhaps less dangerous than NOT doing it.

How does one approach such as thing as being more like other people? Especially from this outsider position... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) It feels that I have been doing it on and off my whole life, in different contexts, and I guess there is a paradox to that too (one feels more connected when becoming more connected, ie doing things like others begets more normal activity). Hah, being normal reminds me of some practices of mine which I kind of take a stupid pride or egoboosting in being a part of. For me it's hard to discern what is a sort of good pride emanating from the practice and the joy of existence, and what is just pride that leads to folly and bad things. Like when getting published. Some things I definitely think I have learned to accept better in myself when I sort of gave up on trying to give up and instead gave into it. If I'm gonna have sex with myself, might as well make it something to remember rather than just f%*! about. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

This post has been edited by AADA7A: Sep 27 2011, 02:01 PM

Talking about magick (however you spell it) is like talking about war, or love, or sex. It doesn't mean a thing until you experience it. You've been given two very good sets of practical advice and instead of trying them you're judging them by your preconceived ideas and previous failures. Whether you take this path is your choice. Decide.

Talking about magick (however you spell it) is like talking about war, or love, or sex. It doesn't mean a thing until you experience it. You've been given two very good sets of practical advice and instead of trying them you're judging them by your preconceived ideas and previous failures. Whether you take this path is your choice. Decide.

I certainly enjoy your advices, albeit not your tone. You do not know what I'm trying or not trying, and I'm not sure I follow you concerning my preconceived ideas; am I bad having them, or following them? Although you do not use the term "bad", I do feel scorned! Why should your advices be exempt from the lessons in life I cherish and use to judge further actions from?

This post has been edited by AADA7A: Sep 30 2011, 11:25 AM

Wow, there sure is a lot said here. I know waterfall and Tomber have both commented, so take this along side as I look at the points I think have the most potential.

----- Thinking, can one think in something else than thought? How would one go about this? Sometimes when I get flashes of ideas, aha-experiences, this happens without words kind of. Sometimes I understand something, and feel the need to formulate myself in words, yet cannot find them. I think this is a key to my potential greatness and growth.

The true mind does not think in words, or even concrete concepts as we know them. The brain thinks in physical thoughts - not just words, but other sensory objects as well, it reproduces these things in order to form it's own kind of 'thought-language'. So we sense resonance with past experiences, and are able to think abstractly in this way. There is a form of thought above and beyond this though, not connected directly to our experience, this is the thought we could think of as inspiration but it is more than just this as well. We experience the True Mind when the Brain Mind is silent.

------ In tao, one takes what one has, and uses it. Can I get addicted to misery in this way do you think? Like if instead of feeling sorry for the pain in the stomach, I try to use that feeling and churning and perceive it as some kind of cosmic vortex, feeling the energy of being alive, could I feed this feeling, encouraging the psychosomatic pain? My body therapist told me this and forbid me to acknowledge the pain, which is the opposite of what Tolle says. And sure, it hurts more when I give my attention to it, but in the long run I don't know...

Your therapist may never have had such experiences before, and controlling pain, especially constant pain, is something that takes experience to master and to teach about. Distraction is not the answer, nor is withdrawing acknowledgement in any way; this is the same thing as just covering up the symptom. You're on the right track in terms of transmuting one experience into another. You have said that you have a hard time imagining what you want to imagine. My suggestion her, in isolation from everything else, is to achieve an observation of harmony, and attempt to transmute the pain into this feeling instead.

Find a place, like a waterfall, some natural setting, and take time to observe with innocence the entire place. Watch birds, watch plants, watch the forces of nature play out around you in harmony. As a cynic, your instinct will likely be to turn your thoughts towards "The water is probably poisoned, the birds are pushed out of their natural habitat" etc... each time, simply turn back and watch the water. Get a sense, not a rational or logical sense although you can use these things to achieve it, of how it all works together. Try to perceive the underlying harmony of it all and try to internalize that sense of harmony. It won't be in one day, or, it might not be in one day I should say. But, time, observation, contemplation, and attention will culminate in a connection to this natural harmony. Because this is not an experience you, apparently, already have internalized it may have an alien quality to it, but do your best not to corrupt it internally. Just take it as it is. There is not really any good sense in explaining how one internalizes an experience, but if you have internalized other negative experiences then you have some conception of what it is and what it means. Examine those processes which have already been carried out in this negative way and you'll gain an understanding of how to internalize positive experiences and observations.

----- I have a problem of not feeling greatness, the aha of being, as when reading about stuff. Like I can read a book on something and feeling all optimistic or happy or AHA, this is IT! The aha-experiences comes, and it goes. I don't get it when reading the same thing a second time, and certainly less often when doing other stuff than when reading. But I can't read all the time! One of the reasons why I feel like I feel is probably because I sit in books all day.

Ah, that feeling! This is the acquisition of new understanding, our brains don't actually get a lot of new information, a lot of learning is reapplying previous knowledge in new ways. For instance, we don't get this feeling very often with, say, math, because after we learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, everything else is basically just reapplication under different circumstances and combinations. Geometry is about math beyond numbers, which is why a lot of individuals get the second high around high school if they have any interest in math.

Don't worry about being attached to the 'aha' experience though. Pay attention when it comes, and consider just what about the information caused it - what did you not know before? We often examine what we know, without considering what we do not know. It can be an especially enlightening experience to balance the 'aha' moment that crystallizes the new understanding in a special way.

Also don't look for the experience in the second read. Instead, if you want to re-read something like that - which I do recommend - read it differently. Consider bit by bit how to actually apply what you're reading, and attempt to derail your old thinking patterns with these new potentials. Really, three reads is best - Understanding, Apprehension, Application.

---- Astral projection, lucid dreaming: tips on books? Do I have a chance?

Everyone has a chance. Don't worry about this just yet though, you have other things to be working on at the moment.

---- Prerequisite for magic? What stops people? Alcohol, drugs, etc. I try working with senses, dizzyness, alcohol. Different things, experiment, not just waiting for perfect time because it never comes. But among people, really hard for me to meditate or let loose.

Prerequisites for magic... in some ways there aren't any, and in some ways there are.

Magic is simply life. The universe has a mechanical aspect, and an organic aspect. The mechanical is a little organic, and the organic is a little mechanical. But all of it is animated. It all fits together and works together, different parts communicate with one another, and where magic as we know and practice it comes in is where we work with and through that animating element. So one could say that first of all this Anima must be acknowledged and then truly grasped. This can be as simple for some people as accepting that it is so. For others, it requires some observation, contemplation, and a change of paradigm which can be tough if you hold a strictly mechanical view of existence.

Beyond that, there are many ways by which people work with it and through it, and this is where the many traditions and practices internal and external arise from. The thing that usually stops people from practicing magic, or doing so effectively, is the inability to accept this principle in a meaningful way. I wouldn't work with drugs for the purpose of practicing magic. I do advocate, personally, the very limited and focused use of natural entheogens - mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote, etc., but the responsible way to approach these things is with a guide or teacher who has the necessary experience. I would not include them in magical practice personally, typically they are initiatory elements except in certain shamanic practices, which you would need to be initiated into if you wanted to go that route. Any drug, though, becomes a crutch. They are supposed to be about showing you doors that you then learn to open on your own. The key though, is in using them correctly, rather than recreationally.

Concentration exercises something I will definitely look into, as of now I'm doing meditation daily with different kinds of practices: sometimes just becoming empty, sometimes rooting myself, or connecting to my emotions, etc. But how will one concentrate better in daily life from doing meditation in-between so to speak? For example I've been going to several physiotherapists, and sure, I get the instructions, but I still have to remind myself like every couple of minutes while doing something to not get into a bad posture -- preparation before something certainly doesn't do it all. But I'm hoping that many different practices have a holistic effect.

In order to carry concentration from meditation into daily life, it is partly a matter of habit, and partly a matter of directed intention to fully engage the experience brought about by the practice. Ultimately the practice itself is just an action, what matters is the experience that arises from it. On the one hand, over time doing the practice regularly makes it easier for the mind to do the same action each time. This then applies habitually by using the same technique in daily life - for instance, in practicing emotional immersion, you are really learning to immerse your attention in an experience. Therefore, the same technique will allow you to fully immerse yourself in a 'present' experience when it occurs, the benefit being a true appreciation of the moment. Emptiness meditation allows us to hit the 'reset' button when we become consumed by a state that we do not wish to continue being in - depression, anxiety, anger, etc. Rooting allows us to take the frantic mind and achieve a moment of stability in which we can take control over the direction of our thoughts as necessary. What you must do in these instances, is not forget that you are developing these skills, and practice them when you need to. Meditation is essentially about concentration, and concentration is a kind of mental muscle. The effects are cumulative just like lifting weights, but in the same way if you hit the gym twice a week but live a sedentary lifestyle, your muscle will not really grow.

The other thing is that many practices do not necessarily have a holistic effect. It is better for focus on attaining one habit or skill first, and then use that skill to achieve others. This is a method of progressing safely, and whereas with multiple practices you will progress slowly and have many plateaus, progression through 'one at a time' methodology will result in fewer plateaus and in the long run much faster progression.

Do you know people who do magic successfully yet abuse drugs? Maybe it depends on what success is, but people who I respect and inspire me seem to be doing quite a lot of drugs. Didn't crowley? But drugs may be even more hard to to successfully than any other kind of magic, at least for me.

I do know many people who practice magic this way. They have a lot of experience and they learned to navigate those experiences before they applied them to magic. And their magic is the magic of self-transformation which maybe, it sounds like, you are looking for. However, this kind of magic begins with exploration of that landscape first. Before you can duel, you have to learn how to use the sword, yes?

What would you believe one would have to have success in before on encounters magic? I think mostly I need to do stuff to stop procrastinating; that damn book with archetypes by jung has been in my bookshelf for a couple of years now, and there always seems to be other stuff to partake in, another marxist to read, a new shrink to visit, or another video game to ponder... Right now, for me magic doesn't necessarily feel more dangerous than other things I've been doing in my life, or perhaps less dangerous than NOT doing it.

Mmmm, I don't entirely agree with Tomber's assessment personally - I don't entirely disagree either. The principle is sound - what we're talking about is the substrate of one experience applied to another experience. To see our intention become realized through our will in a mundane way carries over to seeing it realized in a magical way. This is one approach to using our 'mundane' life to achieve a 'magical' life. It does not mean that all people who are successful in, say, business, will therefore be successful in magic. The thing is, a lot of factors play into success, and while willpower is not the least of them, willpower alone does not achieve success in many areas. Sometimes you need connections, communication skills, ingenuity, flexible thinking, a little bit of intuition, a marketable skill/idea in business, and the ability to learn correctly in education. In any case you need good planning, and all of these can play into successful magic - perception, understanding, clarity of thought and action, intuition, etc. However, these things aren't granted through success - success requires them of us and so we develop those potentials if we are to be successful. Success is, in my own opinion, simply setting and achieving goals, whatever they are.

In a 'strictly' magical sense, we can develop these things in isolation by challenging ourselves rather than seeking and encountering challenges from the world at large. It is more difficult, because if we set the goal, and set up the track to get there, with no outside forces imposing difficulties on us, it is possible that we will go easy on ourselves which does us no good. Magic does require confidence, and confidence cannot be faked.

How does one approach such as thing as being more like other people?

I have mixed opinions about 'normal' - I got where I am not by being normal, but by letting go of the conception of normal and allowing myself the freedom to approach any goal I had in whatever way I chose to and according to my own values. I do not display 'deviance' for the sake of itself, but if I do something normally perceived as 'deviance' it is only because I determined consciously to do it that way for a reason. I believe in living consciously, and being aware of what we're doing, how we're doing it, and why for both of those.

On the other hand, it is necessary that we recognize that while our own internal existence is essentially unique in that we may never directly share that experience with another, at the same time there is a commonality among all people regardless of station or experience. Some suffer more than others, there are places where people do not have the luxury to wonder these existential questions - compared to them your life is a dream because you do not have to take measures every day to avoid being raped and/or murdered, and you are able to eat whenever you please. But, you and this other person on the other end of the earth none the less share certain qualities and characteristics - you are both concerned for your survival, you both experience fear, sadness, anger, joy. Recognizing that the basic traits which give us all a common thread are ultimately what make us 'normal' in context to the human condition allows us a certain comfort. No matter who you are, no matter what you do in life, someone else out there has felt the same things, you are not really alone.

I hope that you will have the opportunity to grow further here.

peace

Sorry for the very late answer, been up to much, too much, and also ignored one of my tenets I try to follow which states that I should just do stuff instead of feeling like I'm too tired, that it won't be good, that something is worth a better answer/attention than I have now, while still doing the same stuff every day which means that when I get time to do the other stuff, I'm in the same tired place.

Transmutation of pain into harmony sounds worthwhile, especially by examining the negative internalization. Not sure how transmutation differs from just ignoring the pain, but at the same time I do feel the difference, which is what matters more. It's like the difference between saying to oneself "go away thoughts , I'm trying to become one with the tao!" and "oh I hear you, and appreciate you, would you like to join in when I become one with you and the great tao?"

Like how you portrait the cynic by the waterfall! Guess we all have that cynic huh, only we don't tell others about it in most settings? It's interesting how much easier it seems to be to internalize bad things. It reminds me of something I read in a book by wicker, "not in kansas anymore", about magic in contemporary us, where the author observes how people have so much easier to believe in bad magic than good! Especially non-believers don't believe in magic, but hey, keep that voodoo crap away from me, just to be on the sure side!

The thing about information not being new but a reapplication would explain why I feel the same things are everywhere, like all ideas contain the same few archetypes somehow, and it's just the context that changes, me that changes.

Point taken on drugs. One thing that attracts me to drugs is that I know people for whom it have changed things, or so they say, so I think I would in the future find people I'm comfortable with, responsible people who know that things can go wrong and what to do about it, people who are magical in some sense, and experiment with them. Only problem is I must decide beforehand what happens if I get no magical experience out of it, and when to stop trying. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

Appreciate the metaphor of sedimentary living! Right now I turned on the computer JUST to answer this post, and then plan to turn it off! Nope, nothing else, even if voices are telling me that I should. I hope this will lead to more experiences when I can do the same thing, strengthen my resolve so to speak.

Concerning holistic effects: what would you think I should focus on right now, what is a good start? Posters above said energy work and concentration, which to me seems very reasonable, whereas lucid dreams perhaps I can wait with.

Yes, we are all africans, so to speak, and this is what connects us. I don't think you approach the question of normalcy which I am talking about through quite the same position as I do, but that's ok, maybe it's hard for others to understand just what I'm thinking about. It's this kind of sense of isolation and alienation, that I will not fit in anywhere, that there is something fundamentally wrong with me, which is quite typical for borderline patients for example, and many teenagers in general. Maybe I should watch some Twilight the movie then! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif) Well honestly I interestingly enough find those movies really hard to understand, or rather the characters there. But one way of finding normalcy, even in my position, could be by seeing what we all have in common. That makes sense, thanks.

I hope I haven't given people to much hope of me contributing on this forum right now, but growing I plan to do, if not here then elsewhere. I'm trying to minimize interaction with the computer, as so far avoiding it is my best bet. In time maybe I will be able to hang here without going off in a thousand different directions, looking up words and concepts, going further into the rabbit hole, and then feeling deplete of energy. Thanks for your help thus far though!

peace!

Oh, and understanding, apprehension, and application; what is the difference between understanding and apprehension for you?

This post has been edited by AADA7A: Oct 13 2011, 04:46 AM

Concerning holistic effects: what would you think I should focus on right now, what is a good start? Posters above said energy work and concentration, which to me seems very reasonable, whereas lucid dreams perhaps I can wait with.

Between the two I would say concentration first personally, because it is a fundamental skill which is the root of many others. And, in general this is true of life as well, we live more effectively when we are able to concentrate. Concentration just takes time and practice, and dedication to developing the skill. Energy work I would say can go hand in hand - if you find that energy work is difficult, then work on concentration more. Energy work is not complicated, it is the simplest thing next to breathing that we can do. What complicates it is overcomplication out of the belief that it has to be that way. Energy simply follows intention. Crystallizing the intention through concentration is the 'difficult' part.

Oh, and understanding, apprehension, and application; what is the difference between understanding and apprehension for you?

Understanding is simply a matter of experiencing and grasping intellectually what is being presented. You could say it takes place in the body of the mind. Apprehension is a deeper state of sensing the place of that experience in a wider scheme. Just because we understand, say, the role of a transmission in an automobile does not mean we apprehend it as part of a larger machine. When we apprehend, we understand not just what, but to some degree why. Apprehension takes place in the mind of the mind. Application is taking both understanding of what, and apprehension of why/how and using that knowledge purposefully to exert change in some way (from 'mundane' ways like installing a transmission or altering one, to more esoteric ways like constructing a ritual based on a fundamental grasp of the tree of life paradigm.)

The three come one after the other, if we don't understand then we cannot apprehend (usually, anyway, apprehension without understanding is a particular talent some people have), and without apprehension we can have application but not effective application.

To apprehend is the more complex of the three. We apprehend addition and subtraction when we can infer that because 3+3=6, 6-3=3. It is the apprehension that allows us to take what we learn intellectually and creatively apply it in different ways based on the underlying principles of the concept itself. To apprehend, to 'seize', it means the same thing here, one has 'seized' the concept.

Comprehension is often categorized between understanding and apprehension, I believe the line between understanding and comprehension to be too fuzzy to be worthwhile. So, understanding -> comprehension -> apprehension -> application, traditionally, which may make it clearer to you personally.

peace