tsuki

Self-empowerment is the act of giving power to the self. It is a matter of two things: first and foremost - power, and secondly - giving. To give power to the self is to pledge allegiance to something greater to it. It can be science, church, state, or personal skill derived from unconscious mechanisms (like beauty, charm, intelligence and so forth). Among these forces, there are hierarchies of power that declare which rules over which under various circumstances. The choice of the source of power is incredibly important due to its capability and mode of operation. There are good forms of power such as cooperation ('I will do my best to be capable and let others join me for our shared benefit') and bad forms of power ('I will coerce others to follow my command under the threat of violence'). Unfortunately, modes of operation and the hierarchy of power are dynamic, so education is bound to be forever unfinished. The same thing applies to the quest of self-empowerment. Ultimately, that is because self-empowerment is grounded in power as opposed to freedom. The connection between power and freedom is through the fact that we have personal will and this will is absolutely free. To will anything else other than to stop willing things altogether is to give yourself to the way of power. To follow the path of freedom is to make room for revelations sent by God. Revelations seem like you are becoming yourself more than you've ever been, while at the same time, you cannot believe that they came from you. In the path of freedom, there is room for knowledge only as long as it is used to express the revelations in a way that frees others. I hope that helps.

@mandyjw Religion is not for uneducated people. The Bible is a gnostic tool, sacred knowledge that is akin to the Arcana of the Tarot. It is used for inducing mystical experiences and contemplating them. It is just INSANE how advanced this stuff is. It's just impossible, I just cannot believe this. Their elitism is relatable in the sense that true faith is only seen when one has rid oneself from all beliefs. Beliefs are understood here as something external towards which hope for salvation is placed (like science, technology, church, and even God). Only the complete standstill and utter surrender is true faith. It is the stable no-mind of Buddhism. If an uninitiated person comes to you for help - this very act is an act of belief. If someone believes in God and hopes that God solves his problems, then these people must be told what to do because they can't take care of themselves. You cannot teach someone to think for themselves because they will follow your teaching and show you that they can't think for themselves lol. It's not elitism Mandy. You're a saint.

Not according to Meditations on Tarot and my personal experience. Divine magic is the art through which mysticism (practical non-doership) has to be expressed. There are various kinds of magic, but divine magic is distinct from the others that it cannot be used for any other end than Good. It's sole purpose is liberation, its source is explicitly recognized, and failure results in ego death for the magician (loss of sense of self-importance). Please, tell me more.

Severe consequences? Are you talking about his crucifixion, or the backlash the world is still having? Jesus could not have possibly cared for being crucified. He was in pain and agony, but he could not have possibly regretted a single thing. Jesus was the last magician. We're talking about magic so powerful, that it gave birth to the technological age, just imagine that. An age where Catholic priests cast magic rituals without even understanding what they are doing. It's just insane when you think about it. I just read the gospel of Judas with minimal prior exposure to the Bible. I only read parts of the book of Job. The gospel of Judas seems like it's about the end of the technological age. It's funny when you think about just how Jesus talks to Judas. It's like Jesus is perfectly aware of the fact that he's talking to himself, but Judas is just playing dumb. It's like he's being prepared for being a next prophet in the future (now?). No, protestants don't understand. Rituals are important, but the fact that they are not recognized within the Catholic Church as magic is fundamental to its operation. Good. I can't wait to hear your opinions on the Meditations on the Tarot.

@mandyjw You know, as I'm going through the Meditations on Tarot, I seriously consider becoming a Christian. This fucking book. If I haven't gone through what this book is describing I would consider it to be some garbage propaganda. It's a work of pure genius. Jesus was a fucking genius, it's just impossible for a man to devise this thing. There are works of art that make people cry, like movies or theater. There are works of art that can change people's lives like books. But to make a spectacle that makes people go insane 2000 years after the death of an artist is a work of God. No man could have devised such thing. The only way is emptying the cup and being divinely inspired.

@mandyjw Whatever that means, I will take it as a compliment.

Interesting. What is your relationship with women in general? Are you also suicidal?

If hypergamy is something he wants deep down, then it's not like I'm going to talk him out of it. In a sense, there is only one way to live life. That way is called here/now.

Synchronicities are moments that reveal the true, empty, nature of the mind. It is when the small self and the big self connect, when your thoughts become indistinguishable from events of the real world. Did you attract me by creating them? This question arises because of inconsistency. Mystical experiences show the point of view of the big self and there is no difference between us, physically. It's like looking at two hands clapping from the point of view of the mind and asking whether one attracted the other. Was it just a deception? JUST?! The Ego may create the inner world through lies, but so does God create the external. In fact, the Ego is identical with God and that is the lesson of the Law of Attraction. LOA is Ego/God praying to itself! The insights were world-shattering because they did, in fact, shatter your world. They were the sounds of a dying mind, the sounds of silence. The path is not about depth. When you press the mind hard enough, it will give you everything, including occult powers, clairvoyance, omniscience and so forth. They will not bring lasting peace regardless of the fireworks. It does not matter whether you do this for your own benefit, or for the benefit of others. I/other is the root fixation of the mind, the fulcrum point that lets it spin the meaning and run the show. Release the 'I' through purification (shadow work, meditation, contemplation, self-inquiry, etc) and the mind will cease. There will be thoughts and maybe even occult powers, but there will be no thinker and no mind. Psychedelics have healing powers. My one LSD trip was an intense, 12-hours release of trauma. Ramana Maharshi taught that realization is accomplished through Grace. This is confirmed by my path. My guru was reality itself, I contemplated it until I became nothing - out of pure curiosity and desire for truth. A guru is something, or someone, that you find magnetic, but instead of being pulled towards it - you are being pulled towards yourself, your own being. Devotion is a very powerful tool of releasing individuality, but I don't think we Westerners are open enough to accept that kind of madness. Yogis devised deities such as Shiva, Kali, etc as object of worship so that people could surrender without guidance of another human (guru). Grace is when you humble yourself down to nothingness and God becomes everything. Then, your deity may let you see yourself as it. You are a Christian. Go meet God in person.

I find it to be extremely beta to hinge your happiness on such fickle matters as sex. A true alpha would be able to sit on his ass for 8 hours straight, not move, not think, and be peacefully happy.

@themovement What have you learned?

After the initial awakening of 560s the work is about purification from the position of no-self. In order to purify, you need to bring it out and scrutinize it. The self-centeredness is not attributable to the awakened one when the realization of the no-self is genuine. It's a form of accumulated psychological and physiological trauma that needs to be released. That is what was happening in your journals. You needed an ear that would listen and the amount of synchronicities confirm just how much. It is not possible to go any further by 'accepting' the self-centeredness. Self-centeredness is the root of suffering and you need to be willing to stop. The only way forward is by letting go of things you hold dear and fight for. That includes both things you fight for your own benefit, as well as things you do for the world. There is a small self and the big self and they both need to go. That is the only thing that makes the pendulum stop.

Because in your experience good has an opposite (selflessness vs self-centeredness). You need to go all the way in and surrender your humility. The book is very vague towards the end. It would probably put me in the 900-1000 range. The grand finale is the stateless state and I resonate with that a lot. There was no path to begin with.

You are abiding in the 800s, in the state of not-knowing. It is not a not-knowing of ignorance, of false humility. It is a not-knowing of directionlessness, of validity of both ends. It is a union through paradox. The path starts in 590s with a negation of the self, but ends in a final, groundless, affirmation. A positive answer at 1000. There is no need to shy away from choosing either end of the paradox, because even this total paradox is surrendered. Your attainment is genuine and remarkable precisely because it doesn't make you feel proud. A paradox is a sign of incompleteness, of overlooked assumptions. The book may help you find them. If you find the author's experience confusing - skip it. The content of mystical experiences is individual and expressing them (like the author did) is what is used to self-reflect. It is a mirror that helps you see your self that is overlooked. Good luck @mandyjw.

It is as real as everything else. Study psychology and see for yourself. I prefer Jungian psychology because it does not treat the subconscious as a separate entity and gives you tools to deal with it (shadow work, as linked by @Truth Addict).

Whose mind?

Alrighty, what are you? Are you? Are you not? What is the world? Is there a world? Is the world not there (or here)? What is knowledge? What is God?

What do you mean by 'real'?

Hmm, can you avoid learning things? No reason can be attributed to unity that can explain its fall to multiplicity. And what perspective is that, exactly?

The article went over my head, I'm preoccupied with Meditations for now. I find it charming that Tomberg seems to argue in favor of Christian yoga over Advaitan non-duality. I need to re-read the second chapter (The High Priestess) because his arguments seem to me like petty squabble and I can't accept that.

Both books are superb. It seems like 1000 is challenging to you emotionally, while I find Meditations to be difficult intellectually.

All theories are built from the fundamental duality of yin and yang. They are comprised of visible, inert, passive 'things' and hidden, active, alive 'interactions'. Dimensions are the fundamental 'trick' that lets us think of yang in terms of yin - it is a quantitative measure of freedom that the theory accounts for. The more dimensions a theory has, the more expressive it is: interactions (yang) can unite the various kinds of 'things' (yin) into a tangible, unified, system. Dimensions themselves, however, are neither yin, nor yang - they are a mirror that lets us see one in the other. They are what informs our notions of possibility and designate the extents of paradox and ambiguity. A theory beyond its application is like looking at a projection of a cube to a plane and arguing whether it's viewed from 'up' or 'down': The connection between God and dimensions is such that it can be viewed as Nothingness and Absolute Infinity. Nothingness is the divine Yin, zero dimensions, where everything is explained because nothing makes sense. Absolute infinity is the divine Yang, infinite dimensions, the God of Love and ultimate freedom of creation. The former is stillness surrendered-to, while the latter is genius possessed-by. Of course, they are symmetric in the sense that it takes a genius to be still because reality abhors vacuum, and it takes stillness for a genius to express his/her inspiration. So, humans are meso-dimensional because we choose the theories based on their dimensionality, and we're meta-dimensional because we create theories to fit the dimensions of any given problem. Both of are divine, as they require from us a choice in directionless conditions - to unwrap the unknown into knowledge and wrap it back to unity.

From Meditations on the Tarot

Yes, the feedback is a mystical experience. The point however is to not cling to it, not making it into an 'achievement'.