Thursday, September 28, 2017

Empty-headed II - Testicle Head, Kidney Head

Although we have been trained to believe that thoughts are trapped in our brains because we believe ourselves to be the physical body we appear to be, as explained in Empty-headed our [sensation of our] head is in fact empty.   In truth our entire [sensation of our] body is created by the mind and the head is in itself empty; our thoughts cloud about the face and occupy the seemingly physical objects in the world around us and beyond as well as all over our mental homunculus of our self.


In One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia we encountered the testicle-headed or ovary-headed personification of Yesod known as the Many Mannered Mind Man.  In the ''physiognomy'' laid out in the Hermetic Lessons we know that people with high testosterone are more likely to act in certain ways than others - for instance aggressive tendencies, lack of restraint, and paraphilias are much more common - and in describing their behaviour we could say they are thinking [and acting] with their testicles.  Similarly the other personifications are related to other glands and groups of hormones that produce physical changes in the body alongside altering the mood of the various individuals who express them in lower or higher concentrations than ''normal'' - those personifications could be said to be thinking with these other glands.

In confronting our bias towards facial-cranial centrism in this way we have to ask where is our head actually at? When we are talking to other people we generally talk to their faces but the whole body of the person you are talking to is a construction of their mind - why not talk to their feet, their belly, their nipples or their butt - as if it were their face?  What if that person is thinking with their testicles shouldn't you be directing your attention and intention that way as if their testicles are their head? Even deeper than this every nucleus of every cell is in fact a ''centre'' of mind - talk to the whole being as if it were all head and all mind, imagine your own body as all mind, that is, after all, what it is.

My ''natural grade'' is the kidney (particularly the adrenal cortex), I am ''kidney headed'' and therefore, fundamentally, a cleaner. Many doctors, assassins and even actors are cleaners (that's why we say ''polish'' the work, and we provide catharsis, a kind of purging of blood-spirits for the audience) - a toilet cleaner or over zealous housekeeper is effectively working in preventative medicine!  The more kidney headed I let myself become the more ''OCD'' I get, the more focused I am on polishing the form and the more capable I am of multi-tasking - if one is disciplined these special powers of the cleaner can be applied in a great variety of areas. 

Over the last few weeks, however, I have been actively investigating moving my ''head'' or centre into other parts of my being and re-imagining my own head (and others') as if it were, say, a tail.  This can be quite amusing as different thoughts/emotions/responses are immediatly generated by this experiment.  Allow your ''head'' to drift into the back of your knees, live as if the back of your knees were your head for a few hours or a whole day, more importantly diminish the role of the head/face give them the same level of consideration you would normally give to your heel, or your tailbone.

Monday, September 25, 2017

One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia



The Many Mannered Mind Man was one of the characters in a vision of the Tree of Life I recieved when I was younger, a memory palace created in a previous life to pass my knowledge on to myself.   Encountered by ''the Genius'' on the shore of the Great White Sea, later I came to understand that this Mind Man is a Partzuf of Yesod - a personification that allows me to engage in dialogue with this aspect of the Tree of Life and understand/remember the related ''physiognomy''.  Like the other characters, the Many Mannered Mind Man had his own chapter in The Book of Fantastic Lies - the book of the vision - called One Hundred and One Pieces of Mind Man Trivia.
 

Looking at the image we see:

- The skeleton confronting the symbol of its death/infinity on the shore
- The Mind Man's head is replaced with a Yin Yang to symbolise the phases of the Moon
- The tube attached to the helmet makes it appear like a testicle or ovary
- The tube goes down into the ''White Sea'' which is shown to be a mucus, or sexual fluid
- Within the white sea are perfect egg-pearls which represent individual moments




Why trivia?   As I have got to know the astral plane I have discovered that it is an ocean of ''our'' memory most of which is banal or trivial.  Trivia can aggregate into more significant encounters/beings (the icebergs in our vision) but the prima materia is the trivial.  As forms of head injury can produce perfect memory recall of banal things e.g. what day it was on a particular date, etc so we store all such things in memory but thankfully cannot access the vast majority of it.  The astral plane consists of  all memories, all trivia, every possible timeline all scrambled together - the Akashic Records.

Situated as we are in the Depth of the Past we live our life experiences in the aftermath of the moment, ever catching up with ourselves - am I already dead or dying and is my life actually my life flashing before me?  If we imagine our perception to lie just behind the moment we could imagine the next step ahead would be the moment itself but our perceptions/sensations of the history of our reality are contained within the outer mind which may then be finally contained in a physical body directly experiencing the ''now'' of physical reality.  Therefore we have to navigate this entire structure of the Inner and Outer Mind in order to apprehend reality itself, to get to ''now'' be it death or not - the Depth of the Past does not lead into the ''Depth of Now'' but the Depth of the West, the Depth of Memory.  If in the Metabolism of Time the Depth of the West represents the place the day goes to die, where digestion is completed - what does this say about the Depth of the Past?  Excreta?  Only when we understand that this life is itself but one memory can we begin to understand memory itself.


Since all time is history - including the future - our own timelines in the form of our DNA can guide each of us back into the veritable oceans of our ancestry.  Like the tube of an old diving suit these ''astral threads'' can breathe ancient past memories and ancient future memories.  The Many Mannered Mind Man, a higher dimensional being, freescales through these timelines, a Librarian of Babel, inspecting each moment to guarantee it is perfect - and perfectly trivial.  Confronting infinity reduces you [and all meaning] to the trivia that you are but however little importance your trivia has it still has some [ 0.0 recurring].  Only by confronting the vision of the infinite can we discard the baggage of extraneous meaning, our excreta, that prevents us ''becoming'' the Many Mannered Mind Man - and taking another step on the journey to discovering our true selves amidst the pearls of the infinite.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Hermetic Lessons - Practical Work Discussion I

As they continue to do the work the students are now leaving the Depth of the Past and moving along the Path of the Moon towards the Depth of the West.  As they acquire their first spiritual ally (their chosen Lunar deity), learn to hone the will through Raja Yoga and continue to attempt astral projection, they will gain perspective on the ''past'' that they are leaving behind.

As much as our experience of life and ourselves is fundamentally mental it is also fundamentally historical. We very literally live in the past - signals take time to get from [assumed] physical reality through our sense organs until they are organized and transformed into the representation of reality that we experience in our minds.  Being behind the moment in this way makes it really difficult to tell how far behind the moment we exactly are:

- did this already happen and are we in a loop?
- is this mental experience of reality happening in a dying mind, are we literally ''catching up'' with our own death?
- mindfulness only allows you to connect with this mental impression of ''now'' what I call the immediate past, it allows you to catch up with your ''catching up''
- consciousness as anti-time a) the idea of reverie being a shallow experience of highlights of this life but building into a honed, sustained reverie that can take you back through your own geneline b) the idea of prediction and anticipation being a form of future reverie which we can again hone and sustain to see the future (which is also history)




I set the students a series of tasks to complete between now and December when the course will continue with a further three lectures/practical workshops.  They have to:

- form a connection with a lunar deity of their choice
- follow the instructions and attempt to get results on the astral plane or fail gloriously
- succeed in one restriction/observance
- acquire knowledge of basic astrology

I think that although teaching styles are a problem within the WMT they are ultimately regulated by market forces, i.e. the less able teachers are finding that students are not interested in their work and don't want to pay for tickets, venues, lessons, etc.  The more able/flexible teachers will find themselves overbooked and will have to create co-teachers etc.  The more pressing problem regarding teaching at the moment is the notion that teaching = leading and this is probably why the community is treading water.  More on that later but right now I want to explain/explore/justify some of these choices from the perspective of the teacher and also discuss some of the issues the students are having and how I will address them as we proceed -  transparency about the teaching/learning process makes a big difference to the quality of the lesson. 

As we move into the world of dreams and illusion* that is the Astral Plane (beginning in the Depth of the West) the students must have acquired spiritual allies - these allies are for their own protection and will allow them to sustain a vision for longer than they would normally and reduces the chances of being kicked off. Although there are a variety of possibilities here lunar deities are a good place to start as the Moon is the traditional guardian to the entrance to this realm and we are going to need relationships with all 7 sacred planets. As outlined in the Seshat working one of the students made very rapid progress regarding astral experiences after they engaged in a small ceremonial magic ritual to their chosen Lunar deity, then used the prayer as a mantra during gazing.  Although this student chose an Egyptian deity my general advice was to pick a deity that your ancestors might have worshipped.  Another of Irish/Welsh descent is making good progress and has just selected their deity - Rhiannon. I consulted a scholar friend of mine who put this together for her, along with an audio so she can perfect the working in the (closest) language to the deity:


O Rhiannon sydd yn fwy hynafol na hanes y tir
Eich ceffyl yn gyflymach na syniad ac yn ysgafnach na'r gwynt
O Rhiannon yn sefyll ar y twmpath gyda golau lleuad
Rwyf yn eich addoli
Rhiannon doeth, Rhiannon deg Dduwies gwirionedd amyneddgar

The other two seem a bit confused and overwhelmed by the choice but they will make it in the end I'm sure. One is mainly interested in the history of alchemy and has Italian ancestry so I am thinking of directly referring them to Luna/Diana as opposed to another Lunar deity - if you have any other suggestions please advise in comments.  The remaining student is being very cryptic so we will see what emerges.

In addition to attempts on the astral students are also working on lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis.  Sleep Paralysis, an experience I recommend new students attempt to have, has the equivalent horror factor of the midnight ritual in the graveyard (when it comes to developing the astral body) and some students crave that kind of intense experience to ''jump-start'' their work.  Ignoring the roll-over signal is an incredibly easy way of inducing sleep paralysis and after a few failed/aborted attempts students seem to be making ''progress'' there.  Its a kind of cheap, dirty trick to have an OBE quickly and get the conversation on ''what is the self?'' moving outside of the confines of the [sensation of] the physical body - it starts a very different kind of conversation than lucid dreaming does (which is a more common experience although not one that is commonly mastered).  We can also discuss the way in which the outer mind protects itself from the activities of the inner mind.

Certainly having to teach is making me reflect on my own experiences and knowledge and how I structure the transmission - in many ways I am adapting an AA style approach but with the Saadia Tree of Life.  I think the systematic development of different faculties is important and in some ways we are ''climbing the tree'' while maintaining an emphasis on unification and ''grounding''.

1) Depth of Past - Question physical reality and embrace truth of mental reality
2) Depth of West - Memory
3) Depth of Down - Remembering
4) Depth of Up - Forgetting
5) Depth of East - Inner Mind

As we learn about the properties of memory in the next set of lessons, we will be learning more than microcosmic tricks for enhanced reflexes, referencing, learning to think with the spine, or recovering from trauma more rapidly etc but also to ''remember into existence'' and ''forget from existence'', we will also be learning about how the faculties of remembering and forgetting correlate with synchronicities and de-synchronicities.  Ultimately we will be moving through physical, psychological, informational, ''spirit'' and mind-only models to our final destination the time-dependent or temporal entanglement model.

*Like spheres this is an introductory explanation for the Astral Plane, my own understanding is different to this but its a way in.